Apple’s “Share Focus” is an uncharacteristically disastrous invasion of privacy

The TLDR on this is that the iOS “feature” of showing people who message you that you have notifications silenced is on by default and turning it off is not exactly intuitive (there are multiple places where it can be done).

Amazingly, after I posted this link to HN earlier, I discovered that my iPhone has been doing exactly the same thing and sharing my Do Not Disturb status without my knowledge.

I hadn’t really considered “Do Not Disturb” as being a “focus mode” as such, as it predated the focus feature and my shortcuts turn it on and off automatically so I hadn’t thought about it leaking my status.

I previously had been having different issues with this share status thing with the “Sleep” focus which I thought I’d solved. But I’m infuriated to find that despite me changing the relevant settings to off (or so I thought) my phone has still been leaking my focus status to anyone who messages me in certain situations.

This default to “on” for this behaviour is totally unacceptable.

Not to mention the default to sharing the status with my Mac which I never asked for. Which in turn presumably means even more leaking of status information if I chose to use focus modes in my Mac (which I haven’t done yet). I feel like anyone who needs that feature will find it. It doesn’t need to be on by default.

How many more times does Apple have to violate people's privacy before we stop calling it "uncharacteristic" when they do?