Apple faces a class-action lawsuit filed in California which accuses the company of false advertising. The suit claims Apple told consumers iCloud data is “stored by Apple” when, in fact, the information is in some cases stored on servers run by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
Mikey Campbell for AppleInsider:
According to the suit, Apple breached customer trust and legally binding contracts by using its status and name to sell iCloud subscriptions to customers believing their data would be stored in a cloud that it owned and operated. Instead of first-party servers, the company farmed out bandwidth to Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft’s Azure platform…
Plaintiffs allege Apple makes no mention of third-party servers in its marketing materials or its iCloud terms and conditions. Indeed, the preamble to iCloud’s customer agreement suggests all data flows directly from user devices to Apple itself. “When iCloud is enabled, your content will be automatically sent to and stored by Apple, so you can later access that content or have content wirelessly pushed to your other iCloud-enabled devices or computers,” the document reads.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s support document “iOS Security: iOS 12.3,” May 2019 states:
iCloud stores a user’s contacts, calendars, photos, documents, and more, and keeps the information up to date across all of their devices, automatically… Each file is broken into chunks and encrypted by iCloud using AES-128 and a key derived from each chunk’s contents that utilizes SHA-256. The keys and the file’s metadata are stored by Apple in the user’s iCloud account. The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information or the keys, using both Apple and third-party storage services — such as Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform—but these partners don’t have the keys to decrypt your data stored on their servers.