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Comment by world2vec | Hacker News Reader

I regret immensely not having turned ADP before... Now I'm feeling really angry at this whole thing.

The best time to turn on ADP was before this happened. For folks not in the U.K., the second best time is right now. The more people who use it, the more disruptive it will be to turn off.

Keep in mind there are some risks with any E2EE service! You’ll need to store a backup key or nominate a backup contact, and there’s a risk you could lose data. Some web-based iCloud services don’t work (there is a mode to reactivate them, with obvious security consequences.) for what it’s worth, I’ve been using it for well over a year (including one dead phone and recovery) and from my perspective it's invisible and works perfectly.

Here's how:

On iPhone or iPad

    Open the Settings app.

    Tap your name, then tap iCloud.

    Scroll down, tap Advanced Data Protection, then tap Turn on Advanced Data Protection.

    Follow the onscreen instructions to review your recovery methods and enable Advanced Data Protection.

On Mac

    Choose Apple menu  > System Settings.

    Click your name, then click iCloud.

    Click Advanced Data Protection, then click Turn On.

    Follow the onscreen instructions to review your recovery methods and enable Advanced Data Protection.

Unfortunately, the title says

> Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

Only in the UK, everyone else should still do it. Not on by default

Apple should start prompting users to enable it.

probably avoiding the support issues of users losing access to encryption key recovery

Can confirm.

"Apple can no longer deliver ADP in the United Kingdom to new users" with the enable button disabled.

The article reports that it will be disabled for existing users at a later date.

I'm guessing this is because they haven't figured out a way to do it yet. I'm not very well versed in how these systems work but surely this type of encryption can't be disabled by Apple remotely (or they would have that backdoor they don't want)?

They will either just automatically turn it off in a future device software update, or they'll just post a deadline after which they will delete user data and prevent sync if it isn't disabled by the user.

The Bloomberg article has a little more detail about this:

> Customers already using Advanced Data Protection, or ADP, will need to manually disable it during an unspecified grace period to keep their iCloud accounts. The company said it will issue additional guidance in the future to affected users and that it does not have the ability to automatically disable it on their behalf.

Wow, thanks for sharing! I thought that might be the case but "disable it or we'll have to nuke your data" seems so extreme I thought there must be a better way.

I'm thinking that by losing their iCloud account is just means it will be blocked from syncing anything with Apple's servers.

Anything else would be indicative of ADP encryption not working the way they said it does.

The “grace period” will also function nicely as a period of time for UK citizens to shout at their government representatives about this.

If you care, then it's time to ditch iPhone and Android phones altogether. It's not like anything they offer will be safe. You need to invest instead in a FairPhone with e/OS or a PinePhone or some similar alternative. Something where you have complete control of the software and ideally the hardware.

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