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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Apple made the news again over the weekend 
And not in a good way:
Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing its virtual assistant, Siri, of eavesdropping on private conversations and sharing data with advertisers between 2014 and 2023. The settlement allows Apple to avoid admitting guilt, a public trial, and potentially larger charges such as wiretapping, which could carry fines exceeding $1.5 billion.
This looks like the ‘Active Listening’ marketing tool I mentioned in a pervious thread:
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@urszula, almost three years after you started this thread (in October of 2021), the iPhone 16 went on sale to the public (20 September 2024).
With apologies for the curse word in this video’s title, I recommend that anyone interested in this thread’s topic should watch this video:
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