Mac Users’ Unsaved Files Auto-Stored in iCloud

By PETER VAN BUREN, November 5, 2014.

Sorry about this Mac users: a default setting is storing all sorts of thing you may not intend to store in iCloud. Here’s the problem, and how to solve it.

According to SLATE, opening TextEdit or taking a screen shot with your MacBook exposes your material to, potentially, the whole Internet. If you’re like the majority of Mac users, you believe your in-progress files — the ones you haven’t explicitly saved — are being stored on your hard drive.

But a SECURITY RESEARCHERrecently noticed that Apple’s default autosave is storing in-progress files in iCloud, not on your hard drive. Oops! Unless you decided to hit save before you start typing, or manually changed the default settings, those meeting notes, passwords, and credit card numbers you jotted down in “Untitled” are living in iCloud.

This has been happening since at least December of last year according to APPLE’S KNOWLEDGE BASE. It affects TextEdit, Preview, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Word for Mac isn’t affected.

You can (and should) turn off this “feature” in Documents & Data —> Apple —> System Preferences —> iCloud —> Documents & Data, or you can save your empty file before you even start typing. Once you save a file locally, it will be removed from iCloud.

As Slate notes in warning: “Silently uploading in-progress documents without user notification is troubling enough for people temporarily storing business notes, passwords, and credit card information. In other situations, it can be downright dangerous: journalists taking notes on sensitive topics, domestic violence shelters jotting down addresses and specific information about victims and perpetrators, or scientists working with personally identifiable research data.”

Image via Apple
Mac Users’ Unsaved Files Auto-Stored in iCloud