Yosemite Phone Home

What if I tell you that your new OS X Yosemite might be whispering your activities back to the mothership? Chances are that you wouldn’t believe me. Apple’s reputation regarding data tracking has been spotless so far. Mac OS has always been consistent with respecting user privacy. It’s only natural for Yosemite to follow suit. Well, it might not be as clean as it purports to be. Of course, you can blame it on this mass hysteria that has everyone up in arms about data tracking. Everyone is hunting down chinks in the armor of beloved and trusted companies. Apple is the latest victim of this hysteria.

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As seen above, Spotlight is sending your search queries back to Apple and other third parties (including Microsoft). Oh, and your location will also be tracked if Location Services is turned on. If you don’t want your data to be sent to these parties, you can tick off the corresponding options in the device settings. You can opt out of data tracking. What’s concerning is that it’s opt-out and not opt-in. “On” is the default mode for this option, which sounds rather convenient since most people don’t home in on an app’s terms of usage.

Github has an ongoing project that pinpoints specific files and data that are sent back to outside parties. Its purpose is to find and document privacy issues. Those who want to resolve the current issues of privacy concerning Spotlight, a “fix macosx” site aims to restore user privacy.

We have yet to find out if this discovery will just be incessant nitpicking or a genuine cause for concern. It’s too early to tell. For the privacy-conscious and the trend watchers, this is one discovery that’s worth looking into. But for now, this isn’t a debilitating disability that should cause you to shun everything Apple.