Documents published by the Intercept reveal the range of information that US authorities can get from service Apple's iMessages (now renamed Message) through court orders.
Because all iMessage content is end-to-end encrypted, not even Apple itself can access the actual conversations. However, iMessage messages also contain some metadata that is sent and stored on Apple servers.
Για παράδειγμα, η Apple καταγράφει κάθε νέα συνομιλία που επιχειρούν να ξεκινήσουν οι χρήστες. Κάθε φορά που ένας χρήστης εισάγει τον αριθμό τηλεφώνου ενός ατόμου μέσα από την εφαρμογή, το iMessage αποστέλλει τις πληροφορίες στους διακομιστές της Apple για να καθορίσει εάν και ο άλλος αριθμός ανήκει σε χρήστη που διαθέτει την εφαρμογή iMessage ή όχι. Αυτές οι πληροφορίες χρησιμοποιούνται πριν την αρχή κάθε συνομιλίας μέσω μηνυμάτων του iMessage ή την default the phone's SMS application.
So the Authorities who have judicial decisions, using this data can find out with whom a user has spoken, the date, time as well as the address IP.
Metadata does not mean that they indicate that a conversation took place, but they certainly indicate that the user at least tried to communicate with the other party.
In addition, because the data stored is recorded and the IP of the user, the Authorities or someone else can determine the geographic position of the user based on its IP.
Apparently Apple lied about not storing such data in 2013 when Mr Edward Snowden made the NSA scandal known for the first time. He then revealed that Apple was allowing the NSA to collect metadata from its service.
The company said in a statement following Snowden's revelations that "we do not store customer location data, map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable format."
The documents published by Intercept are called "iMessage FAQ for Law Enforcement, ”And is a kind of manual detailing what kind of data can be collected by Apple. These records clearly show that Apple collects location information in the form of IP, contrary to previous statements by the company.
