iCloud

A Chinese spy carrying out industrial espionage against GE Aviation and Honeywell’s aerospace division was caught with the help of access to an iCloud backup of his iPhone. The data obtained included a never-before-seen copy of a security form used by the Chinese security service when recruiting spies.

Xu Yanjun, an officer in China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) was arrested and brought to trial in the US after investigators lured him out of the country to a meeting in Belgium, from where he was extradited to America …

With the release of iOS 15 last year, Apple added a new perk for those buying a new iPhone or iPad. When you buy a new iPhone or iPad, including the new iPhone 14, you’ll get a temporary boost in iCloud storage to back up your old iPhone. This streamlines the process of setting up your new iPhone 14.

Update: A federal judge has now approved the settlement – see bottom of piece for details

An iCloud class action lawsuit has been settled out of court, with Apple agreeing to pay a total of $14.8M to US residents subscribing to one of the paid storage tiers during a specific time period.

The payout was agreed upon after it was alleged that Apple breached the service terms and conditions by storing user data on non-Apple servers …

Apple last year updated its iCloud Utility for Windows with a password manager for the first time, so that users can access and manage their passwords stored in iCloud Keychain from a Windows PC. Now the iCloud Utility has been updated with support for two-factor authentication (2FA) code generator.

An Apple Indonesia agreement could force the company to hand over to the government the personal data of iCloud users.

Other tech companies also signed the agreement after the government set a deadline to avoid fines or even being banned from operating in the country.

iCloud Photos is a fantastic feature for syncing large photo and video libraries across all your devices. Have a 300GB photo library? With an iCloud subscription and Optimize Storage, you don’t need a 512GB or 1TB iPhone to take your media with you. Still, iCloud Photos backups shouldn’t be ignored.

Keeping a local backup of your photo library is mighty important. iCloud Photos can feel like a backup. It’s really just your photo library in a single place — even if you don’t use Optimize Storage. iCloud Photos really doesn’t encourage methods of keeping separate, offline copies of photos and videos.

Apple has just released iOS 16 beta 2 for developers, and while we’re still not sure what exactly is new, the company has confirmed a subtle change coming with today’s update. With the latest beta version of iOS 16, users will finally be able to backup their devices to iCloud over LTE and 5G networks.

Introduced in 2014, iCloud Documents and Data was a system that automatically synchronized data from different apps and made them available across a wide array of devices. Now, Apple has announced that this service was discontinued and it’s now part of iCloud Drive.

As part of its new iCloud+ subscription service unveiled at WWDC 2021, Apple launched iCloud Private Relay. This feature is designed to give users an additional layer of privacy and security by sending requests through two separate internet relays to mask user information.

The feature is currently available to iCloud+ subscribers as an opt-in “beta” feature, but a new report suggests that may change with iOS 16 this year…

An iCloud crypto wallet attack saw an estimated $650,000 worth of cryptocurrency and NFTs stolen from a trader within seconds.

While the attack relied on a sophisticated piece of phishing, it also revealed a key iCloud vulnerability with MetaMask …

My girlfriend and I make extensive use of shared iCloud calendars. We have one for joint events, and we each share our own calendars so that we both have a complete picture of our schedules. That enables either one of us to arrange things like dinner with friends, knowing that it won’t clash with anything else.

But (semi-) vacationing with friends, we’ve also found a shared group calendar is the perfect way to coordinate activities …

With iOS 15 and macOS Monterey 12 last year, Apple added a new iCloud Private Relay feature that helps protect your internet privacy. The feature works by sending all of your internet requests through two separate and secure internet relays, including one operated by Apple and one operated by a third-party.

The web infrastructure company Cloudflare is one of those partners with which Apple is working, and it has published a new blog post detailing its role in the iCloud Private Relay process.

Users have been experiencing difficulties when trying to access some Apple services on Thursday evening. Multiple reports indicate that iCloud, iMessage, FaceTime, and others are partially or completely down around the world.

For the past few weeks, some users have been complaining about a “New iCloud Terms & Condition” bug that needs you to accept iCloud’s terms and conditions over and over again.

Earlier this week, 9to5Mac reported on major issues with iCloud syncing and CloudKit that have been plaguing third-party applications. Now, some affected developers say that they have heard from Apple that the issues have been fixed, with some additional details on what happened to initially cause the problems.

Update: Apple said it had fixed the problems with iCloud, but now the company states that they’re back. Not only that, but Game Center is also having issues this Wednesday.

If you’re experiencing problems when trying to access some iCloud services, you’re not alone. iCloud Backup, iCloud Mail, and iCloud Photos are currently down for some users.

The Apple system status page is best known not for displaying the actual status of Apple services, but rather a pageful of green indicators that only change once a problem is so widespread and severe that the company can no longer hide it.

I mean, I get it. There will always be minor and temporary glitches affecting a tiny number of people, and it’s not realistic for Apple to update the page to reflect each one of these. But I think there’s no denying the fact that the page currently has its own reality distortion field …

Over the last several months, an issue with iCloud has emerged that is impacting many popular third-party applications that rely on Apple’s cloud infrastructure for syncing and other tasks. Apple has not yet publicly acknowledged the problem, but some developers have reportedly been privately contacted by the company to confirm that it’s an iCloud server problem impacting their apps rather than an issue with the app itself.

Following multiple reports that iCloud Private Relay stopped working with some carriers, Apple is making it clearer to users what can be done when Private Relay is not working due to a network error. With iOS 15.3, users will see a disclaimer telling them the possible reasons why the feature is disabled and how they can fix it.

Some iPhone users this week noticed that iCloud Private Relay suddenly stopped working with their cellular connections. While T-Mobile first suggested that the affected devices were running iOS 15.2, Apple on Wednesday claimed that no changes were made to Private Relay in iOS 15.2.

Some Apple services are experiencing issues – the company has acknowledged that iCloud and Photos are slow or currently unavailable.