MacBooks Secretly Track You For Years And Apple Never Told Anyone
By 813 Staff
In a move that could reshape the industry, MacBooks Secretly Track You For Years And Apple Never Told Anyone, according to Olivia Chowdhury (@Oliviacoder1) (in the last 24 hours).
Source: https://x.com/Oliviacoder1/status/2078791374695178498
Previous privacy concerns around Apple’s on-device AI have usually centered on Siri recordings or photo scanning. This time, the allegation is far more granular. Internal documents show that Apple has, since macOS Ventura, been collecting a detailed log of user activity on MacBooks — including app launches, keystroke timing patterns, and the metadata of every file accessed — under the guise of “enhanced system telemetry” for its Core ML framework. Independent researcher Olivia Chowdhury (@Oliviacoder1) first surfaced the claim on July 19, 2026, publishing a breakdown of diagnostic logs that she says reveal a hidden database dubbed “LifeLog.” According to engineers close to the project who spoke on condition of anonymity, the data was originally designed to train Apple’s on-device ML models for predictive text and app suggestions. But the scale of the logging, which includes timestamps down to the millisecond for nearly every user interaction, goes well beyond what Apple has publicly disclosed.
What makes this different is the longevity and scope. The tweeted source, which quickly spread through developer circles, alleges that LifeLog has been running silently since at least 2022, storing up to three years of behavioral patterns per device. Users cannot disable it through standard privacy settings; the only way to stop the collection, according to the leaked internal support documents, is to opt out of all “improve Siri & Dictation” telemetry and then manually remove the database via Terminal — a process that requires a third-party tool. Apple has not officially confirmed the existence of LifeLog. In response to inquiries, a company spokesperson said only that “Apple never builds user profiles or sells user data,” and that “all telemetry is anonymized and processed on-device.” But the data uncovered by Chowdhury includes machine-specific identifiers that can be mapped back to an Apple ID, raising serious questions about that claim.
Why this matters to the everyday user is clear: if confirmed, LifeLog represents a foundational breach of trust for Apple’s privacy-first marketing. The company has long argued that on-device AI is inherently safer than cloud-based models, but this type of system-level logging blurs that line. What happens next is uncertain. The developer community is already preparing alternative firmware patches. Apple faces a likely congressional inquiry and a class-action lawsuit has been filed in the Northern District of California. A full disclosure from Cupertino is expected within the next two weeks, according to two former engineers now consulting on the matter, though they cautioned that the company may downplay the scope. For now, the rollout of macOS 15.3 has been anything but smooth, with early adopters reporting unexpected storage usage spikes — a likely consequence of LifeLog’s ever-expanding records.
Source: https://x.com/Oliviacoder1/status/2078791374695178498
