ICloud sync-- now, this is one of those situations--
and I give an example, and I really
need to find a better one--
but iCloud sync is when you have something happening
on one device, and then it reaches out
to all your other devices.
And this is one of those situations
where a lot of people don't realize
what they're actually sharing.
So if you look at your iPhone, and you go into iCloud,
and you go into Sharing, you are going
to see what you actually share with people.
So if I go into my Sharing, I'm going
to see that I share Apple Music with people.
You may want to see if you're sharing photos,
if you're sharing text messages.
All of these things could actually affect you.
My son came into my office one day and said to me, mom,
I have your pictures on my iPad.
I was like, no, you do not.
There's no way.
I have child-- parent account on mine,
child accounts on my kids' iPads,
which means all of their data syncs to me,
but it's supposed to be a one-way street.
However, one day he asked me if he could
have Apple Music on his iPad.
And I was like, yeah, I'll give you access.
You can listen to music.
That's fine.
As soon as I did that, he got access
to my text messages, my photos, and my notes.
So think about how this could go really wrong for you
in certain situations.
But also think about how this could cause mass confusion.
Let's say right here on this Mac,
if I leave it unlocked and I walk out of this studio,
and a phone call comes in, and I take it on my watch,
it's-- that call log is going to sync to my phone and to my Mac.
So if you're examining the data, are you
going to be able to say where something occurred?
Think about this situation.
What if you have a babysitter come into your house,
and they use your child's iPad, and they search for something,
or they're texting another teenager.
That could sync to your device and make
it seem like you are texting that teenager.
So you have to be careful with how this data looks.
It can cause mass confusion.
When we look at this data, something else to consider
is, who is the responsible party?
And as soon as you sink iCloud together,
things can become very, very messy.
My ex-husband was a Virginia state trooper,
and once his phone fell into the toilet at a prison.
And when I came home from work, it was my fault
that he didn't have backups.
So I said to him, back up the data.
And he's like, I can't.
I don't have any space.
So I was like, back up to my iCloud.
So I log in as my iCloud, give him access.
All his backups go to my cloud.
Now, here is the issue.
One day I was testing AirDrop, and I looked at my phone.
I'm like, why does it show my LinkedIn profile for you
when you're airdropping me?
It's because it's associating it to iCloud.
Let's say some kind of crime occurred,
and you had his phone and mine.
It would probably look really confusing to you
on, why am I seeing duplicates?
And you're not.
It's just we had so much sinking and cross-contamination
that finally, I told him, just pay $0.99 a month to get
this space from Apple so you can separate and go onto your own.
If you need to know if the person is sinking
to multiple devices, you want to look
at CloudConfigurationDetails.plist,
which is the bottom bullet here.
That is a good place to start.
Why this is also important-- if you
are working a missing persons investigation--
let's say there's a team that goes missing,
and the parents give you the iPad that's left behind,
because the iPhone is missing.
Look for this CloudConfigurationDetails.plist.
It would give you information about the phone
that the user has, if they're possibly syncing the cloud,
if they're syncing to a Mac, if they're
syncing to any other devices.
It can be really, really helpful for you,
for your investigation.
But it can cause mass confusion.