Macintosh Vs Windows in terms of privacy.

This is a question I've always wanted to ask but was always worried at the response I might get from people who just being jerks. I use Linux as my main OS at home, and mac at my job cause thats what supplied to us, this is just a genuine question. In terms of privacy even though Mac and Windows are both closed source operating systems who has a history of over stepping privacy boundaries more. The only two things I know about Mac with privacy, the first being the bad part is that icloud scans your photos for (CP) and an AI learning system finds these images and you'll get contacted by apple, the classic (Its to track down CP so its good) The good part I know of mac is the fact you can allow certain apps to not be able to access files, so lets say you have discord you can go into the privacy settings and disable its rights to read your file system, that might not even work and these is no way to prove it though cause its closed source. Does any windows users know if windows has an option for this, I looked to see if there was any third party software that would allow this to work with windows but I couldn't find aynthing. That's pretty much all the input I could give about the battle between the two non FOSS os's anyone else have input?

>>51788 I'm not 100% sure, as I have not used Windows for almost a decade, but there is a program called sandboxie that you could use.

The thing about Mac is that you're basically forced to go balls deep and exclusively use mac for everything if you want to be able to get the Apple experience. In terms of privacy I believe it'd be the worst since they'd basically have all your info in one place anyways. With windows you can at least use different phone brands and so on and expect the same functionality but they don't really compare to be honest.

Apple's marketing is just that. If you dive through pages and pages of their website you'll find their actual data collection policies which are as you would expect from a modern day tech company. One thing you didn't mention is that MacOS sends information about every application you run to Apple servers (I believe it was things like hashes and vendor information IIRC). Microsoft didn't really get into the spying business until Skype and later Windows 10, they've since backported certain things to Windows 7 and 8 so those aren't exactly better options (certainly not 7). You should try to keep as much information as possible off of the Mac and only use it when necessary.

>>51793 >The thing about Mac is that you're basically forced to go balls deep and exclusively use mac for everything if you want to be able to get the Apple experience. Yeah that is pretty annoying honestly, I remember reading a while back though that Apple never helped the FBI when they tried to get into terrorists phones, of course they got into it themselves but its king of interesting that apple refused to help. Is this fact true? I looked into it a bit more but.... idk its on a bunch of main stream politics.

> stabbing yourself with a knife until you die from blood loss vs burning yourself alive in terms of survival.

>>51798 >Yeah that is pretty annoying honestly, I remember reading a while back though that Apple never helped the FBI when they tried to get into terrorists phones, of course they got into it themselves but its king of interesting that apple refused to help. They used to be about "we respect the privacy of our customers" (refusing to comply with FBI) now its all "we need to ensure the security and law compliance of our customers"

>>51800 Just wish Linux had more programs,,,, I'd never need to touch other OS's lmao.

>>51800 >"we need to ensure the security and law compliance of our customers" I honestly feel like Windows would be that way, even on the Linux Mint site it says "We only store personal data when it is needed, either for our services to operate properly, or to comply with the law" found on https://linuxmint.com/privacy.php thats the distro I use for its ease of use.

>>51804 >on the Linux Mint site it says "We only store personal data when it is needed, either for our services to operate properly, or to comply with the law" I think that's more in relation to their website than the actual distro.

>>51808 >their website Where does it say that?

Probably Macs are safer and more private because Microsoft has a long history of going out of it's way to making programs for government agencies and the police. I haven't seen any indication Apple added file scanning to Mac OSX like it did iOS and I dont think it uses AI at least not currently. What it does is look for hashes in known illegal material. Which can easily turn up false positives. Microsoft has done the same and a decade longer on all their services so their system is likely more invasive.

>>51788 Macs >used by content creators (privacy against unnecessary exfiltration of royalty IP, since they also do a lot of bank) >have heard somewhere that it spied on a journalist imac by taking "screenshots" making it slow (hacker found the spyware) >security-wise it's probably better but it's probably chromeos that's better (privacy-wise none of them are good) Windows >netbios never gets patched >botnet mirai biggest target >bypass all login bitlocker encryption >privacy-wise it could scale due to customization, security-wise it's much worse than a mac or chrome. I'd be worried if I ever did bank or crypto wallet over a Windows operating system, it's a hot target for hackers especially that mirai author who I suspect was some minecraft guy I'm thinking most of the children gamers who use windows and minecraft are probably infected by mirai and a simple ACS backdoor over router telnet can chain into netbios backdoor so I'm weary of windows systems even if I could modify it to some extent but it's more a waste of time, even windows systems at the same network as me (I've seen network logs of windows systems probing IP addresses), although the same could be said with apple as I've seen network logs of these apple devices querying ipv6 local list suspiciously. Although privacy is more of a mindset than it is "toolkits/OSes". Sure you can go full Tails and enjoy full privacy and anonymity but no tool will stop you from posting your personal information by accident or by intention. A tool is not enough to cover up for stupidity. >scans your photos for (CP) Reminds me the Little St. James Island video with a drone had a "iMac" so might be true. Technologies like these would be abused first to kill actually innocent people like journalists (example is pegasus). The question is "why now?" after all these years, microsoft also has photodna which existed in win8.0 so it's probably no different but no big arrests whatsoever and trafficking/abuse still in the works and only journalists who sniffed any info about the "abusers" are actually the ones dying from these "think of the children" snitchware and I'm assuming csam production never even went down (according to a local police report, covid actually worsened abuse so it's no surprise apple had to do it). Humanity is doomed and covid should just reset this corrupt instance of civilization rm -rf / It makes me sad they suicided people like John McAfee or maybe it was too much for him to take reality, having his entire wealth purged, US still goes after him for tax evation despite the fact most other rich people never actually pay tax due to loopholes like cruise ship swapping or some soykaf like investing in some tax haven like panama to hide wealth (well of course McAfee is ignorant of such practices or choose not to do it, but still he died with an ominous instagram photo posted right after - the killer itself I assume). >>51789 >I'm not 100% sure, as I have not used Windows for almost a decade, but there is a program called sandboxie that you could use. It could be broken, I remember some qubesdev or similar was able to break it.

>>51788 >Its to track down CP so its good https://web.archive.org/web/20061029141026/http://www.shipwright.com/horsemen.html 8.3.4. "How will privacy and anonymity be attacked?" [...] like so many other "computer hacker" items, as a tool for the "Four Horsemen": drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles. 17.5.7. "What limits on the Net are being proposed?" [...] Newspapers are complaining about the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers

>>51788 I think Windows and Mac is out of the box if you care about privacy. Using Linux for privacy can be considered as a choice, but most people choose Windows or MacOS because It's too convenient to use and it's what they've used. But In my opinion, mac would be safer at privacy. Mac has way less users than Windows. Maybe attackers have less interested in MacOS than Windows.

>>51788 >In terms of privacy even though Mac and Windows are both closed source operating systems who has a history of over stepping privacy boundaries more. Both systems are insecure from user privacy perspective. If anything, it is "we can kill you by drowning you or pour molten salt into your throat" kind of choice so it doesn't really matter. What matters is that Microsoft has a monopoly and Apple doesn't. But if my answer doesn't satisfy you, you can check these two lists of malware functionalities: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html

>>51798 >>51800 If you ask me it was all a security honeypot to get idiots to think iphones were safe, because the feds already had a way to take data from iphones so it made no sense to bitch to apple unless what they wanted was for possible targets to use iphones instead of some hardened degoogled android phone with a 12x12 password grid

>>51798 >Is this fact true? No, but it doesn't matter since the FBI unlocked the phone without Apple's help less than 2 weeks later. Current guesstimates pin it somewhere between a publicity stunt and consumer hardware trolling. Beyond that, it's utterly asinine to believe that the largest company in the United States doesn't also collude with our government. There's quite obviously some give/take action happening with the SEC, which is why European courts are the only ones who actually push antitrust suits these days. The US has no interest in giving up their surveillance, so they'll fund the Google/Apple duopoly until the wheels fall off.

>>52194 It's a publicity stunt. >>51788 >Macintosh Vs Windows in terms of privacy. Conclusion: If they're offline they're OK but it's better to use outdated OS and have it be airgapped. If you're using it vanilla, without modifications both are no different but you have more advantage with a Mac. If you're a casual or a small company with no important secrets or r&d both are fine but Mac is better since it doesn't spread viruses through usb drives but Windows file system and office suite is more superior along with ease of deploying custom software. Both sux if you are: Activist/Journalist Into security Government, R&D company or startup who don't want their soykaf stolen. Why would you compromise though, if you're just a musician or content creator either is fine as long as you keep your work and personal soykaf divided or segmented never to collide. If you're a big company, science soykaf, or have million dollar ideas as a startup probably the best idea is to develop your own OS or use rhel. When you say "privacy" you have to understand that it doesn't begin and end with the OS or the browser that you're so brave about. Privacy must include the whole infrastructure comprised of different computers that work on a wide area network this includes your isp, your dns provider, your browser provider (telemetries), your local network devices (exposure notification and more), border gateway, website service provider, cdn+host service provider, so it's all a jumble and interlink of companies with common interest over your data and profile and all of them can automate the datamining. You can say Mozilla Firefox is truly indeed pro-privacy because it has both "donottrack" , privacy tab containers, and DoH but all of these are nonsense that only protect you from other people which is more of a privacy against common people but not against web/internet companies. When you run a network analyzer you will see what else it does behind your back, while it has tons of telemetry, remote safebrowsing hashing, mozilla location services all on by default which all may have some privacy policy which is just redbull soykaf kaching. It's the same concept as claiming both iphone/android have great privacy against other people since they both offer encryption and the ability to be wiped and device-locked when stolen, get it? It's privacy against thieves but not us alphabet companies who are thirsty for some big fat data that it's actually predicting what people's data is.

They're both fundamentally terrible security and privacy wise. Apple throws it around constantly, it's all marketing and complete bs. Consider a minimal GNU/Linux install, otherwise OpenBSD would be a good option. No software is 100% foolproof, you will always have issues. It's a never ending battle. But those will be the better of your two options, and obviously will have some sacrifices for some gains just like everything else. You will NEVER get actual privacy and/or security from proprietary, closed source systems. Just a bunch of BS marketing. That's it. There's nothing else to be argued from those stances. You fundamentally cannot compare the two, because they are closed source. They also are known to be factually riddled with security and privacy issues anyways, this isn't new news. You have no way of knowing anything that happens on them (to an extent), you only have so much control over them, Windows is probably worse security wise due to the disaster of it's code-base, and the amount of legacy code which is unsurprising. Apple and Microsoft also both have a history of working with PRISM in the past. Unsurprising.

>>51788 What's you model? Mine concludes that MS is much more trustworthy than Apple. >>51789 Way to go to admit that you never go outside. >>51799 >[Insert Funny Here] >>51841 The definition of "Malware" is very slippery you might just bite your own tongue too.

>>51788 https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours Apple/macOS can't be trusted >It turns out that in the current version of the macOS, the OS sends to Apple a hash (unique identifier) of each and every program you run, when you run it. [...] Because it does this using the internet, the server sees your IP, of course, and knows what time the request came in. An IP address allows for coarse, city-level and ISP-level geolocation. >Now, it’s been possible up until today to block this sort of stuff on your Mac using a program called Little Snitch. [...] The version of macOS that was released today, 11.0, also known as Big Sur, has new APIs that prevent Little Snitch from working the same way. The new APIs don’t permit Little Snitch to inspect or block any OS level processes. Additionally, the new rules in macOS 11 even hobble VPNs so that Apple apps will simply bypass them. >In other news, Apple has quietly backdoored the end-to-end cryptography of iMessage. Presently, modern iOS will prompt you for your Apple ID during setup, and will automatically enable iCloud and iCloud Backup. iCloud Backup is not end to end encrypted: it encrypts your device backup to Apple keys. Every device with iCloud Backup enabled (it’s on by default) backs up the complete iMessage history to Apple, along with the device’s iMessage secret keys, each night when plugged in. Apple can decrypt and read this information without ever touching the device. Even if you have iCloud and/or iCloud Backup disabled: it’s likely that whoever you’re iMessaging with does not. To be fair, Windows is even worse. In Windows 11 only Microsoft can use the APIs for inspecting running processes. I wonder what that's for...

>>53276 New versions of Windows loading ads and braindead clickbait """news""" directly in the start menu and task bar is gross as hell. I don't know how modern OSX compares.

>>53341 Read the update part. It mentions Apple responded to these concerns and says it will delete IP logs (im not sure on the time frame) and promised to make it so users can opt out of this feature which actually was meant for malware protection which actually sounds believable of a reason for it's existence and why it previously wasnt something users were allowed to officially disable. In theory if the settings are actually respected that means you could turn it on and off to create a sense to any onlooker you aren't using certain programs because it appears to be showing programs you use and is absent assuming you dont slip up forgetting the change the settings back on and off before opening the programs you want private or known.

mac tried to push privacy, ceo spoke against complying and that got ceo in jail under questionable accusations, next guy caved obviously. The general problem with tech is gov wants spyware/backdoors and others find and exploit them too. That said i believe mac did traditionally better than windows. They didnt have any accident akin to windows nsakey found in registry debacle which was a clear public embarassment. They did have a data breach on their store however though thats not really special and more critical infrastructure got pwned too.

you know. i've seen these threads 1000000000 fuarrrkin times right this soykaf ain't safe that soykaf ain't safe. but like nigger, why not just use a fuarrrkin firewall and block that little jewnigger soykaf on it's way out the door and call it goods? just firewall everything and move on with your life >awaoh b-b-b-but icloud! >m-m--my u-u-u-pdates like nigger you didn't need that soykaf to turn it on and beat off fuarrrk off with that soykaf

>>51788 It's a poison pill either way. Windows is built out of the box to spy on you and has been since Windows 8. Every single service exfiltrates data and phones home in some way. You cannot prevent this, only mitigate it. The Macintosh (as in Macintosh personal computers) is a secure platform - FOR NOW. But because MacOS exists as closed, proprietary software, and so many of the base applications depend on Apple to continue servicing them (or depend directly on Apple online services, like Books, iCloud Drive, etc), MacOS's privacy stance can change on a dime, with very little you can do as a user to prevent it. Consider that iOS used to be textbook secure until Tim Cook announced the next update was going to install the equivalent of an NSA rootkit using 'CP prevention' as an excuse. The bottom line is you simply cannot trust proprietary software. You have no guarantee that it won't eventually be used against you and in service of the deep state/corporate panopticon/both - even if it's secure today, it might not be tomorrow. >What if the manufacturer has no incentive to betray me? Before the CP-scanning update, Apple had been pushing 'privacy as a human right' in its advertisements for upwards of three years, maybe a good bit more. That's a ton of good will and security reputation that they pissed down the drain for exactly no reason. A rational actor would not have done that, so this means that either a) relying on corporations to be rational is foolish, or b) corporations are rational, but whatever the NSA is threatening them with outweighs the benefits of good customer relations.

>>53373 >nigger >just firewall everything and move on with your life oh boy..

I recently had discovered Intel ME on Apple computers is pacified. Apple didn't want it to have as much features as it normally does in part from security risks concerns so Apple computers use a custom version of Intel ME. No idea what Apple Silicon does though. Also apparently Apple couples the UEFI updates with system updates which keeps you up to date more easily and Windows doesnt do that where you have to manually update it yourself and probably will be late on that update.

>>54730 one of the apple heads got jailed under dubious allegations after trying to push privacy&security. Idealists simply get removed. You can safely assume everything is backdoored.

>>51788 Whats your purpose for caring about privacy? If you're using windows or mac, telemetry+backdoors, and the 3LAs will just pwn you like a n00b like everyone else but you don't need to worry about anything, just your insurance company, local or online companies knowing about your internet profile/footprint. There's a reason people working with multi-million/billion dollar research, design, and development either use a personalized linux fork or a private OS they've developed themselves. Now with that out of the way, let's assume you don't have or work on anything noteworthy that can turn the tides of economy, scientific breakthrough, or similar but lets say you are a journalist or someone who happen have compromising material, or someone who works as a barrister (prosecutor/attorney or a judge) then you would need security or privacy BUT entrusting that to the hands of some company might be the worst idea, this is why they make their own or use alternative email services for that since there's a possibility of data leak or a hunt (for journalists, whistleblowers), medical data is another concept but they're usually dumb and end up leaking all sensitive medical information of people anyways when some netbios or spools exploit leaks into the hospital offices. Now with all of that, lets say the best is probably just to use some really small footprint OS and device, it doesn't have to have "auto-updates" or patches, just make sure what you're running is scrutinized and audited like you can run a trisquel linux, or even an old windows xp and a old macOS, they're all the same BUT NOT UNTIL the backdoors phone somewhere else (or until you've installed a malware). Privacy can be confusing. You can say Google and Apple both provide a great privacy protection and solution against third party adversaries, they can remotely wipe your device when it's lost, they can provide you email and other services, they can provide trustable official builds of telegram or whatever and will notify or give automatic updates when there's a new 0day BUT that only protects you against third-party ad companies, hackers, thieves, etc. That doesn't stop them from (legally) collecting whatever they can while you use their products (this is why people who make do r&d don't use consumer soykaf). The truth is privacy is just the concept of a "company, an individual, or an entity exfiltrating something from or identifying you". That might sound more like anonymity but at this point the only way to enjoy privacy is to disassociate your identity from as much companies as you can since it's the only way your "captured data" gains its value (userid+data), but recently they've become extremely clever, they use (then and until today) Evercookie (variants like html storage), and other means of fingerprinting techniques (hardwareid,useragent-based), but if you're using a device normal people would use (smartphones, vanilla pc/mac) they have APIs to pull out all the IDs they can assuming you "installed the app" or use some modern software that every normal people probably use (reminder all companies have INCENTIVE to collect and sell user data even if it's allegedly anonymous they can pretend and just do it anyways once you violate the terms of service, which begs the question, can they forge that violation themselves?). We can say you should avoid as much companies and their associated binaries as possible, when you use an internet with vanilla device like a normal person would, you're already on huge privacy risk. The ISP is a company, it knows your browsing history by default, even if you did use tor it will know your traffic is tor nodes. Your dns is most probably unencrypted which is another company either the ISP or the one you set yourself. And then there's the proprietary BGP (afaik openbsd bgp is not widely used), and also IXP that might have exploits or abuse logging, let's not forget the possibility of your ISP, the IXP, the BGP being compromised, even the companies, or the trust providers (signing and checking), they can all be compromised at some point. The question: Macintosh vs Windows? there's really no definitive answer. If you both use the same programs anyways you probably would leak as much data+identity on either when you do poor practice and rely on too much external companies' products with incentive to collect your data. On my case, I would say the safest route is to use a device you can totally control. I don't really trust these "big tech companies". I don't trust their auto-updates, I've even seen some practices like targeted/selected updates (other user's updates are different builds but same provider/country). If a system behaves completely on its own, there's also a possibility it can plant in some file or malware in your OS so that's a big no. If I were to be honest, using an EOL version of mac/windows is probably fine as long as you keep it disconnected at all times, have nothing in wireless (because bluetooth and wifi are pwned and most likely are proprietary drivers anyways), you won't be missing out that much since the best tools are actually outdated software anyways since everything just wants you to use a cloud subscription thereby forcing you to this auto-updates crap. Just wait for reactos to mature if your workflow is already great on a windows machine but as the last reminder, it's really just all about "that company, an individual, or an entity exfiltrating something from or identifying you"

>>54742 Linux has way more exposed vulnerabilities at any given time so I doubt it's much better. You're just trading off business surveillance and your government surveillance for every surveillance government that's willing and every hacker on the planet. Literally only option is either not connect to the internet ever or a DIY OS different enough from everything else available to public.

>>54756 linux is better on userside simple on account of not being windows same as your dyi OS idea- there is no point attacking the outlier when you can aim for mass market noobs on windows that will click the link in your pishing mails and have no security beyond maybe mcfail installed.

>>54758 Most servers run Linux iirc so there is no reason it wont be a target as much as Windows is.

>>51788 Privacy? Mac, by a slim margin. But after all, we may never know. It's closed source.

>>54759 servers being linux is correct but your private system wont face server attacks and attacks on users will target windows. Its not a guarantee for zero attacks but by pure numbers close to none at all. This counts double if you run windows software on wine or visit websites - its simply not economical to target you which makes it safer.

>>54742 >There's a reason people working with multi-million/billion dollar research, design, and development either use a personalized linux fork or a private OS they've developed themselves. they would usually use a hardened custom build of the linux kernel in combination with various non-software security measures (airgapping, etc.). At least that's what I would do if I were in charge of IT. Really really important stuff like central bank computers and aircraft controllers do have custom software and hardware, and usually there is a wealth of internal documentation, because mistakes are very expensive. I remember a recruiter telling me that every line of code running on a Boeing aircraft has a comment. It sounded like a dream come true to be honest. I know a guy who does secret work I'm not allowed to know about for a military contractor, I obviously don't know what exactly he does but I do know that he sometimes has to go into a "clean lab" and there are strict airgapping procedures.

>>54762 oh yeah to add on to what my friend does: He also mostly works in C# using VSCode.

>>54762 Airplane code is a custom language called Ada. Entire focus is math verification. Its a lot more expensive to develop but very save for same reason.

>>54756 From what I've seen, Linux based OS's just don't have good attack vectors so most of the vulnerabilities you talk about simply aren't utilized at any scale. And even then, I don't think counting vulns is a good measures of how secure a OS is.