Apple's Claimed Private Data Flows Pass Through Amazon Infrastructure (gist.github.com)

Not really a secret, e.g.:

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/03/apple-says-it-uses-amazons-c...

Having both worked at Amazon and still in the cloud industry, to me this seems like a strange take.

Apple leases these computers from Amazon like it would from any other colo. Why wouldn’t these servers be considered Apple servers?

Barring a major privacy violation by AWS (which doesn’t seem likely), or some other sort of 0-day hack the data on these servers is entirely private to Apple.

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> Where is this data going once it reaches AWS, and how is it being handled outside Apple’s network?

PRISM

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> This appears inconsistent with Apple’s privacy statement that such system data “never leaves Apple servers or goes to third parties.”

As I recall, this statement was specifically about Apple Intelligence. It was for their AI that couldn’t be done on-device, and wasn’t going to ChatGPT after user authorization.

It was not a general statement that all Apple endpoints are in-house.

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> The smoot.apple.com service provides the signed configuration data (“bags”) that shape how Apple’s apps behave.

That sounds like it is distributing configuration data from Apple to user's systems. Is there any per-user private data in that?

Looks like a nothing burger from someone with an incredible GitHub profile of reporting monumental security flaws to Apple and not being credited or receiving bounties.