Apple secretly stores call history, claims security firm

Russian digital forensics firm Elcomsoft has found that Apple’s mobile devices automatically send a user’s call history to the company’s servers if iCloud is enabled.

He told Forbes “I suspect that this is probably more of an engineering issue around making handoff work when you are answering calls between your phone and your desktop or if you’re using FaceTime on your desktop'”.

The actual contents of a call aren’t saved in iCloud.

It’s not just traditional voice calling data at stake here either, the security firm adds. Moreover, Elcomsoft claims that even logs from video calls that take place on FaceTime are also sent to iCloud.

Aside from saving regular call logs, Apple also seems to have been logging the metadata of FaceTime calls since the public release of iOS 8.2 for iPhones in March 2015.

There are privacy laws in place regulating when your phone company can use, share, or allow access to that data. “That’s what it’s for!” Apple’s Legal Process Guidelines [PDF] for U.S. law enforcement suggest as much: “iCloud only stores content for the services that the subscriber has elected to maintain in the account while the subscriber’s account remains active”, the guidelines state. Much of the data may have been on the iCloud and hence accessible. So where is the information stored? But as The Intercept points out, a hacker used the software back in 2014 to break into over 100 celebrity iCloud accounts and steal compromising photos.

“Where Apple could run into problems is in foreign markets that restrict retention of caller data”, he said. It’s generally 30 or 60 days for telecom providers, because they don’t want to keep more [records] than they absolutely have to. That can have unfortunate consequences, however-especially when phones are syncing sensitive information that users aren’t explicitly aware of, and then a company famous for developing smartphone cracking software finds out.

There is also a way to gain access to someone’s iCloud data log without their credentials. However, officials still want Apple to help them unlock numerous other phones connected to state and federal investigations.

This is done using call history syncing to Apple’s iCloud servers.

Most iPhone users willingly hand over their call logs, text messages, notes, and everything else when they activate iCloud backups, which are recommended in order to access your information should any glitch occur with your phone. Two-factor authentication won’t, however, prevent law enforcement from legally obtaining iCloud data directly from Apple.

So what can you do?

“Synced data contains full information including call duration and both parties”, Katalov wrote in his post. Many people will see this as a privacy concern but, worryingly, Apple does not provide a way to disable call log syncing.