[webmobdev]

I appreciate the time you have taken to appreciate explain some of the things. I would tend to believe most of it if I wasn't so cynical to Apple's claims towards privacy personally (but that's me, and I can understand if you have a different stand on this). E.g. Once I updated my macOS, I noticed that all my previous privacy settings had again be reset to their default settings (including changing the settings in macOS firewall to allow Apples services to connect to my computer) that would allow Apple to harvest more of my personal data (data privacy laws are quite lax in my country). And now they are becoming an ad company and will use this same data against me. Cynical me wouldn't be surprised to learn if Apple was using the Camera on the Mac and iDevices to try and determine the emotional state through facial recognition, and collecting data on what a user does in that emotional state on the device - Apple already tracks what apps you open, what files you create, all your iMessages, all your safari browsing data and bookmarks etc.What better means to improve and offer personalised ads ...

[garblegarble]

I can understand being cynical given that experience.

Personally I trust them on privacy more than any other tech company, and I think would give them the benefit of the doubt that what you experienced was a settings bug (or a well-intentioned firewall exception) - but I'm sure I would feel differently if it was my settings that had been reset, and I know that once that trust is shaken it's nearly impossible to rebuild it.