iPhone Secretly Sends Your Call History to Apple Even If iCloud Backups are Turned Off


November 17, 2016

In the fight against encryption, Apple has positioned itself as a staunch defender of its user privacy by refusing the federal officials to provide encryption backdoors into its products, as well as implementing better encryption for its products.

However, a new report from a security firm suggests Apple’s online syncing service iCloud secretly stores logs of its users’ private information for as long as four months — even when iCloud backup is switched off.

Russian digital forensics firm Elcomsoft discovered that Apple’s mobile devices automatically send its users’ call history to the company’s servers if iCloud is enabled, and stored that data for up to four months.

And it turns out that there is no way for iCloud users to stop this phone call syncing service unless they completely disable the cloud synchronization feature.

Elcomsoft, which sells software to extract data from Apple’s iCloud backups and works with police and intelligence agencies, says the company should tell its customers exactly what personal data it is backing up—and should give users an easy option to turn it off.

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