Child pornography: Apple wants its employees to know how to respond to customers

Apple sent a memo to its employees concerning the imminent arrival of the tool to fight against child pornography. The manufacturer asks them to be ready to answer questions from customers.

Apple to its employees: know how to answer customer questions

The memo, relayed by Bloomberg, was sent to both physical Apple Store employees and those working on the online store. Here is what it says:

You may receive privacy questions from customers who have seen our recent announcement on extended protections for children. A full FAQ is available here to answer these questions and bring more clarity and transparency to the process. We have also added the main questions related to the detection of pornographic content below. Please take the time to review the questions below and the full FAQ to help our customers.

There has been a flurry of green wood since Apple announced plans to scan photos for pornographic content and report users to authorities. This will be in place from iOS 15 and Apple will use the hash. It is a fingerprint specific to each file. The hash of each photo in iCloud will be compared with that of a database. The process will take place directly on the user’s iPhone. This is when a whole system will be put in place to report users in the event of content being discovered. This Friday, Craig Federighi, responsible for iOS and macOS, clarified that the alert will be triggered once the threshold of 30 images has been reached.

Critics all the way

Pending the implementation of the new system to fight against child pornography, Apple receives criticism from several customers, security researchers, the whistleblower Edward Snowden and the NGO Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). She believes that Apple will put a backdoor in the iPhone. She (and others) think Apple could very well change usage in the future and not just scan photos.