Hey Friends,
This week is Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).
While many eagerly await announcements of new consumer products (I jumped off this train a long time ago) as is often customary practice, it was interesting to see the focus on software, with new versions announced for the entire product line.
Again, while many will be excited by the new features of iOS15 such as FaceTime Links, interactive Memories within Photos, Notifications Summary, Live Text, I was more interested to see if they would continue their war on privacy and ad tracking.
Following a cursory glance at the new features within iOS15, it does appear that Apple has doubled down on privacy giving users the ability to see when individual apps request access to the microphone, camera and phone gallery, and also which third parties the app has shared data with during the last seven days.
In addition, several other changes have been introduced to improve privacy:
- Voice commands used with Siri will now be processed on the local device rather than being sent to central servers for processing, unlike competitors such as the Amazon Echo.
- The device IP address will now be hidden when using Apple Mail and Safari. This will prevent email marketing campaigns from tracking where an email has been sent and whether it has been read. It will also prevent third parties from tracking web activity (using an IP).
- Subscribers to iCloud will also be able to hide their identity when using Safari by routing traffic through two internet relays (similar process to using a VPN). Plus, users will be able to hide their email address when signing up to online services by using the 'hide my email' feature (similar to using an email alias service).
Are these new features welcome additions? Yes, I would say so.
Do they go far enough? Probably not, however, I may soon upgrade my mantra slightly from: 'Apple have good security but poor privacy' to 'Apple have good security and meh privacy'
Have a great week.
Take care,
Chris
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Things I've found interesting this week
\\ One Link: Another outage for many sites including Amazon and Reddit
\\ Two Link: A reminder of what could happen when we connect everything to the Internet and it goes down
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