Your passwords are encrypted with keys stored only in the local on-device TPM.
This is a pretty lame windmill to tilt at.
This is a pretty lame windmill to tilt at.
They really want to avoid the risk from anyone inside the company having access to your passwords and then doing anything with them.
Compare the consequences for a large company vs an individual.
For the individual, if caught, a debilitating fine and, depending upon damages, jail time. Probable end of career, if related.
In short, life changing.
For the company, possible fine almost certainly less than the revenue made. Small chance of larger civil suits, with legal costs and possible judgments. Depending upon visibility, perhaps some additional PR spend. Even if the sum total cost is greater than the associated revenue, those costs can be used to offset tax liability.
In short, low risk of existential threat, or even actual financial loss -- just reduced profits.
Apple on the other hand would see your bank balance as a rounding error to a rounding error, but could easily lose a billion dollar from bad publicity that’s what’s balancing vs any financial upsides. Further, doing it once doesn’t move the needle it needs massive scale and thus massive risks to be worth anything to them.
Maybe a plunge protection stock-price guarantee.
Or NOT.
It is essentially about the trust. You either trust that they don't misuse the cloud-uploaded passwords or not. If you cannot trust that, you cannot trust the whole ecosystem as the same entity controls it and can misuse it in any imaginable way.
So essentially, the issue of deletion is just about the visibility in the UI, if we trust their claim about the end-to-end encryption.