My simple hypothesis: Apple uses the number of photos auto-uploaded to iCloud from iPhones.
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iCloud + iPhone = iSpy
Scary stuff! But easily stopped by ditching the iStuff (and some other tech stuff) and making different choices.
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I have also been pondering this aspect, which adds a certain level of concern. Considering that I and others have photos stored on iCloud, originating from various devices, including “normal” cameras, and you can easily upload from a pen drive photos to iCloud Photos, I am curious about the methods employed to differentiate between them.
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There is a bunch of metadata in image files that could be used for that kind of analysis. See e.g. Exif - Wikipedia. The images may include information about location, time and unique ID of the device, among other things.
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Yes, I don’t know a lot about computer tech these days - however even I am aware that it would be quite easy to match from metadata, the camera device type (make, model, perhaps serial number etc) to the computer/device IP address or other unique identifier. Then perhaps match this with other collected data from iCloud user accounts.
I used to work in the field of document and data collection and collation within the engineering industry - we often collected ‘extra’ data without knowing what we might use it for, with the thought that ‘it may be useful in the future’. It proved to be true when searching for certain documentation as we had more terms and fields we could search in to find what we needed, from millions of stored documents.
With this thought, who knows the scope of metadata which is being collected by certain organisations?
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