Fact check: Does the iPhone "journaling suggestions" setting reveal your name and location to strangers?

Snopes says no. Sorry, Snopes, but the answer is yes, it may inadvertently reveal that you were nearby during the day, to anyone who has you in their contacts list. This is effing intrusive.

Everyone with an iPhone has Discoverable by Others set to the ON POSITION.

H/t to RANGER71

Anyone who has your number or email etc. in their contacts can access this information.

These days, many of us have a large list of contacts. Sometimes we have shared a phone number or email once, for a business reason or because we need an air-conditioner fixed or something. Sometimes we have people in our contacts that we don’t want to talk to, but whose phone numbers we keep, so that we know if they’re ringing.

But what is more disconcerting, is that the journal app makes it possible for others to discover that you are nearby; all they have to have is your name and phone number in their contacts.

Even if you don’t have the Journal app, if you are in their contacts, and you are nearby during the day, the iPhone may indeed suggest to that person that you be included in their “Journal”, which is really tantamount to their iPhone spying on you.

This photo is from Apple’s webpage announcing the Journal app. I annotated it to show what this will look like.

Nearby People

If you use the “Journal” app on an iPhone, and even if you don’t, it is by default set to allowing Discoverable by Others.

This is Snopes’ take on it:

A privacy feature for the Journal app on iPhone devices with iOS 17.2 and later that's labeled "Discoverable by Others" under "Journaling Suggestions" allows strangers to track your name and location.

Addendum: Snopes rates this claim as false.

This comes from Apple’s page talking about Journaling Suggestions:

Journaling Suggestions may also use contextual information to determine which suggestions may be more meaningful or relevant to you. Journaling Suggestions uses Bluetooth to detect the number of devices and contacts around you without storing which of these specific contacts were around. This information is used to improve and prioritize your suggestions. It is stored on device, and is not shared with Apple. You can choose not to allow Journaling Suggestions to use the number of devices and contacts around you to prioritize your suggestions by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Journaling Suggestions, then tapping to turn off Prefer Suggestions with Others.

You can also control whether your contacts include you in their number of nearby contacts by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Journaling Suggestions, then tapping to turn off Discoverable by Others. If you disable Discoverable by Others and choose not to be included in your contacts' counts, Prefer Suggestions with Others will also be disabled and Journaling Suggestions will not detect how many devices and contacts are around you to improve or prioritize your suggestions.

What does it really mean?

Essentially if you are listed in someone’s contacts, and you are near this person or talking to them, and that person has Journaling Suggestions even if you don’t use Journal, Journaling will suggest to that person (and to you if they are listed in your contacts) that you be included in their journal for that day.

In my opinion this is actually pretty intrusive, particularly considering that many of us these days have a large number of casual acquaintances or work colleagues or virtual strangers, in our contacts, often many people whom we might not want tracking our every move, despite them being in our extended list of acquaintances, but furthermore, all they have to have is your phone number and name in their contacts.

That this is set to “on” by default seems pretty intrusive to me, and makes me feel a bit squeamish.

It appears that Journaling will also list any nearby devices. Does this include identifying the people you were talking to who are not in your contacts, in your Journaling app? I don’t know. If someone who has used the app can tell me, that would be great.

Is Snopes running cover for Apple?

In my opinion it’s hard to argue against the statement that these features being set to ‘on’ by default is pretty off-putting and gives any normal person an unpleasant squeamy feeling in our stomachs, because things we might think of as private are obviously things the iPhone is able to track and record with its computer processing power far more efficiently than we can, with all our human limitations, and it is sharing it with others.

That Apple say they aren’t reporting these things back to base is not very comforting in my opinion — mainly because the fact that they think it’s okay to set such features by default to On, indicates that the engineers or whoever decides these things at Apple really don’t have any idea of how the ordinary person feels about privacy.

It was a famous person who once said, “Whoever can be trusted with small things can also be trusted with big things. Whoever is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in big things too¹.” One feels that this default setting is a very small thing, but it does make us worry, Apple, and the worry that we have is that if we can’t trust you with the small things, we might not be able to trust you with the large things.

Now as to Snopes: I also can’t help wondering if you are running cover for Apple. This is an intrusive feature, and you are so willing to quickly set it aside and rubbish people’s legitimate concerns.

I’m adding Snopes to the First Fact Check hall of infamy for this one.

First Fact Check hall of infamy

Snopes. Again.

1. Jesus Christ, actually, recorded in Luke 16:10