For accounts of children age 12 and under, parents can set up parental notifications that will be sent if the child confirms and sends or views an image that has been determined to be sexually explicit. When the parent has this feature enabled for their child’s account and the child sends or receives sexually explicit images, the photo will be blurred and the child will be warned, presented with resources, and reassured it is okay if they do not want to view or send the photo. What happens if a sexually explicit image is discovered? Furthermore, none of the communications, image evaluation, interventions, or notifications are available to Apple. Apple says communication safety in Messages doesn’t change the privacy features baked into messages, and Apple never gains access to communications. Will iMessages still be end-to-end encrypted? Parents need to specifically enable the new Messages image scanning feature on the accounts they have set up for their children, and it can be turned off at any time. It is a system that parents can enable on child accounts to give them (and the child) a warning if they’re about to receive or send sexually explicit material. Images are not shared with Apple or any other agency, including NCMEC. Rather than using image hashes to compare against known images of child sexual abuse, it analyzes images sent or received by Messages using a machine learning algorithm for any sexually explicit content. It is unclear if doing so would fully turn off Apple’s on-device scanning of photos, but the results of those scans (matching a hash or not) are only received by Apple when the image is uploaded to iCloud Photos.Ĭommunication safety in Messages is a completely different technology than CSAM scanning for iCloud Photos. No, but you can disable iCloud Photos to prevent the feature from working. In response, Apple defended the system, telling Motherboard that one used “is a generic version and not the final version that will be used for iCloud Photos CSAM detection.” In a document analyzing the security threat, Apple said, “The NeuralHash algorithm included as part of the code of the signed operating system security researchers can verify that it behaves as described.” Can I opt out of the iCloud Photos CSAM scanning? GitHub user AsuharietYgva reportedly outlined details of the NeuralHash system Apple uses while user dxoigmn seemingly claimed to have tricked the system with two different images that created the same hash. Additionally, there is an appeals process in place for anyone who feels their account was flagged and disabled in error.Ī report in August, however, seemingly proved that the system is fallible. And if it does happen, an human review would catch it before it escalated to the authorities. Since the system is only scanning for known images, Apple says the likelihood that the system would incorrectly flag any given account is less than one in one trillion per year. Federighi emphatically stated that the system is “literally part of the pipeline for storing images in iCloud.”Ĭould the system mistake an actual photo of my child as CSAM? Federighi said “the cloud does the other half of the algorithm,” so while photos are scanned on the device it requires iCloud to fully work. For one, Apple says the system does not work for users who have iCloud Photos disabled, though it’s not totally clear if that scanning is only performed on images uploaded to iCloud Photos, or all images are scanned and compared but the results of the scan (a hash match or not) are only sent along with the photo when it’s uploaded to iCloud Photos. But Apple is scanning photos on my device, right? An Apple employee will only see photos that are tagged as having the hash and even then only when a threshold is met. As Apple explains, the system is strictly looking for “specific, known” images. Apple further transforms this database into an unreadable set of hashes that is securely stored on users’ devices. Here’s how Apple explains the technology: Instead of scanning images in the cloud, the system performs on-device matching using a database of known CSAM image hashes provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and other child safety organizations. In an interview with Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal, Craig Federighi said the reason why it’s releasing in iOS 15 is that “we figured it out.” CSAM scanning Does the scanning tech mean Apple will be able to see my photos? The new CSAM detection tools will arrive with the new OSes later this year.
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