Apple's iCloud Uploads: How to Disable the Scanning Feature on Your iPhone

Sophie Webster, Tech Times 13 August 2021, 10:08 pm

Apple's latest iPhone model has a photo-scanning feature, but not everyone is on board with it. If you own an iPhone, there is a way for you to disable the photo-scanning feature.

Apple's iOS 15 Changes

According to Apple, your iPhone will only do local scans of photos you upload via iCloud Photos. The scan will happen on your iPhone against a database of known Child Sexual Abuse Material or CSAM photos given by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children or NCMEC.

The feature will be included in the upcoming iOS 15 operating system and iPadOS 15. You will need to make changes before your devices install the new operating system update later this year.

As of the release of iOS 15, the scanning will only happen in the United States. If you are an iPhone owner from another country, your iPhone won't scan your photos locally.

Also Read: Apple Employees Voice Out Concerns Over CSAM Detection Tool-Flooding the Company Slack Channel

To stop your iPhone from scanning your pictures, you just need to stop uploading them to your iCloud Photos account. This means that you can't use the iCloud photos anymore, according to HowtoGeek.

The other cloud service providers like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Google Dropbox are all scanning for the same type of content.

Also, Apple's scanning feature will not be adopted by WhatsApp, so users can store their images there.

However, instead of performing the scan on your phone before the upload, they are scanning the photos after they are uploaded to the service provider's servers.

The significant change here is that the scan will now happen on your device before the upload process. Because of this, users are questioning the process and sees it as being too complicated, according to VOX.

Disabling iCloud Uploads

To look for the iCloud Photos options on your iPhone or iPad, open the Settings app and search for your name at the top. Select "iCloud" in the list and choose "Photos."

If you are using iCloud Photos on your device, the iCloud Photos switch will turn green. Select the "iCloud Photos" option in order to disable iCloud Photos. It will turn grey when it is disabled, according to Wired.

You will then be asked what you want to do with your existing iCloud Photos. If you choose "Download Photos and Videos." you can download a local copy of the whole iCloud Photo Library to your iPhone.

Your Apple device will immediately stop uploading new pictures that you take to iCloud Photos, and it will not scan them.

Alternative Storage for Your Photos

Since your photos will no longer be uploaded to iCloud Photos, you will need to have multiple copies of them so that they don't disappear if you lose your device.

You can store your photos on your computer, and it will serve as a backup. You can also store it to a network-attached or NAS storage device, or you can turn to an end-to-end encrypted cloud storage system so you can keep a copy of your pictures.

Even after you disable iCloud Photos on your device, your photos will be stored on Apple's servers as part of an iCloud Backup. You may want to disable iCloud Backups and create encrypted backups of your iPad or iPhone Instead.