I’ve gone round and round on this before with y’all, so I won’t belabor it. If you believe Apple, great. I’d love to believe Apple, and I’m a longtime Mac user. But there are certain realities which make what is believed a lot more vulnerable than people realize. Hardware IDs and IP addresses are matched with personal info in “Apple IDs” which are indeed uploaded for software registration and update verification. Itunes tracks purchases, credit cards and personal media collections. Icloud adds another huge level of dependency and trust. Getting into the Mac infrastructure is no trivial thing, and you need to in order to use the machines.
As for the fingerprint scanner, even if Apple is speaking the truth about hardware sequestered hashed biometrics, they don’t own this concept and there is an enormous amount of security vulnerability analysts who have written about it both from a software and hardware aspect. Not to mention that Apple’s licensing agreements are not written in stone, and be changed as the company chooses - and there is big money in biometric IDs.
My peeve is that these are common industry concerns, and that means Apple should not be exempt from being questioned about them. IT companies are demanding more and more trust and giving less and less assurances. This is a serious problem, and Apple’s right in the middle of it, just like everyone else. I admit I am impressed with the explanations of the lengths Apple has apparently gone to protect identities, at least from attacks outside Apple. But as I said, I don’t trust Apple either, not for any reason other than I don’t think it’s wise to trust any corporation with anything. Yes, that’s impossible in this world. But no, I don’t think it should be dropped. If pushback is not maintained, companies will take everything they can get.
Given all of that, I admit your explanations have made me feel better about Apple, so I thank you for your efforts - they have not been wasted.
Apple asks you nothing more than information that is already in the public domain to assure that you are who you claim to be, and will have the right to re-access your data when you want to get back in later if it gets compromised, and to purchase apps and updates safely and securely from them. Other than that, they leave you alone.
You are NOT required to give them accurate, truthful answers to the security questions, only answers that you will be sure you can remember. At some point in this world, you have to make choices in whom you will place your trust, such as when you choose a bank, an insurance company, and a place you store your more secure data. You do your due diligence and learn what you can about how they do business and what they do with what they have been entrusted with in the past. It is, always, something of a game of odds, but some companies' business model is selling information about YOU for a profit. Apple's is not. Unlike Google, YOU are their customer, not their product. They ultimately stay in business by keeping their customers happy. Piss off their customers and they will not stay in business.
You are right regarding iCloud. I do not use it.
I also use a prepaid flip phone in conjunction with an iPod touch, NOT an iPhone.
Some technologies inherently have you give up privacy, “cloud technology” is one of them. I am not a big fan of it as it gives way too much leverage and control to the vendor.
If Apple ever forces you to have an iCloud account, and to use it, I will be in a quandary.