Difference between revisions of "ICloud"

Revision as of 13:50, 17 March 2020

iCloud is a cloud computing service offered by Apple Inc. It was launched on October 12, 2011 and has around 800 million users today. iCloud allows users to store different forms of data such as multimedia, documents and application data on secure remote servers through the internet. iCloud offers multiple plans based on storage allowance: 5GB for free, 50GB for $0.99/month, 200GB for $2.99/month and 2TB for $9.99/month ^[1].

Features

iCloud offers a plethora of features, ranging from storage to device locators. iCloud’s feature set can be broken down into the following:

iCloud Photos

iCloud Photos is a feature that allows users to store all their photos on iCloud rather than their phone’s physical storage. Photos can then be accessed through the Photos app or through iCloud.com. Users can also create shared albums which can be viewed by multiple users with iCloud accounts.

iCloud Drive

iCloud Drive is a feature that allows users to store all their documents on iCloud. Through iCloud Drive, users can upload any file of their choice and can seamlessly make changes on multiple devices.

Find My Device

Find my iPhone and Mac are location-based search features offered by Apple. Using GPS, users can log into iCloud and find the most recent location for all of their Apple products, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, etc.

Find My Friends

Similar to Find My Device, Find My Friends allows users to give other Apple device users access to their location and allows them to find each other using GPS location services.

Other Apps

Other applications also take advantage of iCloud’s backup, such as iMessage which backs up all message history on iCloud and Contacts which backs up all user contacts on iCloud.

Ethical Concerns

On August 31st, 2014, a large collection of private images was leaked and posted online ^[2]. These images were obtained from celebrities’ private iCloud accounts using popular hacking mechanisms such as Spear Phishing and Brute Force attacks. One attacker created an email account called “appleprivacysecurity” in order to trick celebrities into assuming the email’s authenticity and requested private information from them in order to gain access to their accounts. The private images obtained included nude photographs of various celebrities and were uploaded to the web under the term “The Fappening”. These images were released in three waves, dubbed “The Fappening”, “The Fappening 2” and “The Fappening 3”. Multiple celebrities condemned the release of these images and pursued legal action to ensure that these images would be removed from the internet.

This leak of images from iCloud started an ethical discussion on cloud-based storage services. iCloud was created to be a safe and private storage space, but it contained fatal security vulnerabilities that gave attackers access to private information. It raises the question on whether sensitive information should be trusted to be stored on the cloud rather than local storage. An online repository possesses many more potential security vulnerabilities than physical storage and has a significantly larger number of entry points which makes it easier to gain access to. Therefore, services such as iCloud and Dropbox (an iCloud competitor) have strong ethical implications that are directly tied to their security policies and strength. Apple is a company that places a lot of emphasis on privacy, with many advertisements based solely on Apple’s promise to keep user data private and this emphasis has allowed users to keep using iCloud’s services without any further security concerns since 2014.

References

1. ↑ iCloud. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2020, from https://www.apple.com/icloud/
2. ↑ iCloud leaks of celebrity photos. (2020, March 13). Retrieved March 13, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_photos