"Mac OS X has always respected user privacy by default, and Mac OS X Yosemite should too," the site reads. To make that privacy fix even simpler, developer Landon Fuller has written it into a simple Python script that he calls "Fix-MacOSX," which he's made available for download. ![]() In Mac OS X's System Preferences, the functions can be found under "Spotlight" and then "." From there you need to disable "Spotlight Suggestions," "Bookmarks and History," and "Bing Web Searches." If you use Safari you will then need to disable the same "Spotlight Suggestions" function in the browser (under "Preferences" and then "Search") to avoid having terms you type into its address bar shared with Apple by default too. Luckily, Yosemite's search-snooping can be switched off in seconds. If the user has enabled "Location Services" on his or her Mac, the computer's location will be siphoned up to Apple, too, "to make suggestions more relevant to you." And Apple notes on a Spotlight preferences description that the search terms will also be shared with Microsoft's Bing search engine, an even more surprising destination for queries that Mac users likely believed they were typing in the privacy of their own computer. But over the weekend, users of Apple's latest operating system discovered OS X Yosemite pushes the limits of data collection tolerance one step further: its desktop search tool Spotlight uploads your search terms in real time to Apple's remote servers, by default.įortunately for Apple's angry users, however, this is one privacy invasion that's easy to cut short.Īpple describes the new "feature" as an effort to include search results in Spotlight from iTunes, its App Store, and the Internet. * Today's web users have grudgingly accepted that search terms they type into Google are far from private. ![]() *Updated with a statement from Apple below.
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