Jan 18, 2023, 2:39 PM@chucker @gruber @kbarker @timbray @briankrebs @mmasnick @Edent yes, iCloud switched off on all devices; on exception is for home automation on one device, all others are disabled (FWIW you never know, probably it does it's thing anyways somehow). Opt-In seems a fair idea. having to disable crap every single time after an upgrade sux, too
Jan 22, 2023, 6:22 PM@timbray @gruber @chucker @kbarker @briankrebs @mmasnick @Edent There was this article on smoot.apple.com:https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/157424/what-are-api-smoot-apple-com-and-other-hosts-my-iphone-is-secretly-talking-to
It's blocked here by pihole
@ar1 @chucker @kbarker @timbray @briankrebs @mmasnick @Edent If you haven’t seen this yet:
Looks like this was simply a bug, the URL call to the Apple server had a zero-byte payload, and the bug is fixed in the new MacOS 13.2 update:
https://mastodon.social/@mysk@defcon.social/109735317907947647
Um, reading down that thread there were people pushing back on the methodology & completeness of the report.
E.g. he reported no request headers, but others demonstrated that the call simply fails if you don't include at least a "Host" header. So something is sketchy.
But yeah, quite possibly a bug. If Finder stops calling home to Apple when I open a pic in 13.2, the issue is closed.