<story><title>Apple reportedly dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained (2020)</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/21/21075033/apple-icloud-end-to-end-encryption-scrapped-fbi-reuters-report</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>modeless</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s also important to realize that the backup includes your encrypted iMessage messages, &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; the key required to decrypt them. Meaning that if you have backups enabled, all the &amp;quot;end-to-end&amp;quot; encryption in iMessage is defeated. Apple and by extension the FBI can read your messages. This is documented by Apple here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.apple.com&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;HT202303&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.apple.com&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;HT202303&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if you disable backups, whenever you correspond with someone that has backups enabled those messages are still accessible to Apple.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple reportedly dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained (2020)</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/21/21075033/apple-icloud-end-to-end-encryption-scrapped-fbi-reuters-report</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>viktorcode</author><text>Since user encrypted iCloud backups would prevent password recovery to access your data I&amp;#x27;m more inclined to believe the decision was made out of convenience for the end user.&lt;p&gt;General public would hate it when the support won&amp;#x27;t help them recover family photos which are still stored in the cloud. Full encryption is nice to have, but overwhelming majority of users won&amp;#x27;t get any tangible benefits from that.</text></comment>