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Comment by ajmurmann | Hacker News Reader

I took his point to be that Apple encourages you to go the insecure route and just trust them instead of teaching their customers good security awareness. Apple doesn't suggest to you to wipe your phone, they tell you to just trust them.

A better analogy from the physical world would be a locksmith who tells you to just leave your keys under the door mat for him so that he can come in and do the work when you aren't home.

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And plenty of people would be willing to make that trade-off on security for convenience. (This is locksmith right? Like...you realize if he actually cared he could get in your house without keys?) Others wouldn't. Depends how sensitive your personal information is; or in the locksmith analogy, to what extent you consider your valuables irreplaceable. Seems kind of silly to expect every layperson to operate to the same security standards as a security professional. My mother does not have credentials to dozens of business systems on her phone; she has pictures of her cats and maybe a credit card account stored somewhere.

The locksmith analogy breaks down fast: the locksmith can enter into your house if he really tries, but Apple can not enter into your phone without your help (if it can, it's utterly broken)

Remember Apple (the organization, not some random 'Genius') has code that runs as root on all Apple devices and can remotely update that code.

> but Apple can not enter into your phone without your help

Of course Apple can - that is why the FBI asked them to do just that. Apple won't as a matter of principle, not due to any technological limitation.

> Of course Apple can - that is why the FBI asked them to do just that.

If they can, it's broken. Do not buy those devices.

You are hopelessly naive. Do you have some method for independently verifying Microsoft and Google cannot remotely access their respective consumer OS's that you'd like to share with us?

Your analogy isn't correct.

It's more akin to leaving the car keys with the manufacturer when you are getting your car serviced.

...with all your personal information (bank info, passwords, etc.) written down on a notebook left on the seat of the car? Then yes, the car analogy works.

And you can choose to take those personal items out.

Choice which is not offered to you by Apple. They are neither explaining what it means to give them the unlocked phone nor telling you that you have the option to wipe out the phone before handing it to them.

You are supposed to know that beforehand, and they are even discorauging you to consider that there are some issues with handing over an unlocked phone, which means 95% of their userbase are not aware that there are security implications.

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