Forum Discussion
Apple Journaling - Discoverable By Others on by default
SebastiaanSmits The journaling application is already hidden.
Regardless that the Journaling application is hidden, the Discoverable By Others is ON by default and you can still turn on journaling suggestions.
This feature is not really as Privacy or Security invasive as commonly thought (is not really for me to decide ofcourse) but not sure your company is assessing this fairly, as of Apple's own writing here:
"Nearby People
Journaling Suggestions may also use contextual information to determine which suggestions may be more meaningful or relevant to you. Journaling Suggestions uses Bluetooth to detect the number of devices and contacts around you without storing which of these specific contacts were around. This information is used to improve and prioritize your suggestions. It is stored on device, and is not shared with Apple. You can choose not to allow Journaling Suggestions to use the number of devices and contacts around you to prioritize your suggestions by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Journaling Suggestions, then tapping to turn off Prefer Suggestions with Others.
You can also control whether your contacts include you in their number of nearby contacts by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Journaling Suggestions, then tapping to turn off Discoverable by Others. If you disable Discoverable by Others and choose not to be included in your contacts’ counts, Prefer Suggestions with Others will also be disabled and Journaling Suggestions will not detect how many devices and contacts are around you to improve or prioritize your suggestions."
The Discoverable part is only for the device suggestion algorithm, to improve the 'raw' contact details and other privacy related parts are not visible to Apple or the user.
See another resource: https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/iphones/no-the-ios-17-journal-app-isnt-a-privacy-risk-what-you-need-to-know
I have read both articles, my issue is with
If you disable Discoverable by Others and choose not to be included in your contacts’ counts, Prefer Suggestions with Others will also be disabled and Journaling Suggestions will not detect how many devices and contacts are around you to improve or prioritize your suggestions."
Be default, the devices are reaching out to other devices. That to me is THE issue. Enabling something that connects to other device in any way by default without me intentionally enabling it. Opens up potential avenues for exploitation as well, again BY DEFAULT.
- Hi,
Agreed, to a certain extent - there are a lot of calls that a iOS device makes over the internet and also locally - for example the find my capabilities, and not all do we enable explicitly. But the main point is, I guess, that the way Apple describes this they do not see this as a Privacy or Security issue. Not sure but that might be the reason there is no MDM setting to disable it.