lutrinus

As far as I‘m aware, Time Machine is a local backup which means the data never even reaches Apple‘s servers.

Additionally, you can and should encrypt your data which Apple allows to do using FileVault.

Again, the encryption key never even reaches Apple‘s servers except if you use the iCloud Keychain. And even if you do and you store your key there, Apple wouldn’t have the key for your iCloud Keychain and thus couldn’t do anything with that data.

Interestingly, as a German who lives in a bubble where people take their jobs very seriously, I was equally surprised when I experienced pretty much what you described while visiting the US.

I guess there are “proud to be lazy” kind of people in any country. It’s definitely not a widespread German cultural thing, though, from my experience.