Facebook ran full-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, taking aim at Apple privacy features coming soon to iOS 14.
Facebook’s ads claim that the new privacy measures, intended to fill users in on how they are tracked online, will hurt small businesses. That’s because the new iOS feature will affect Facebook’s advertising model, which lets businesses target users with ads based on their personal data.
Apple isn’t exempting itself from a new privacy rule requiring App Store software to reveal how users’ information is used. Even the applications that come pre-installed on iPhone and iPad will display their privacy info in the App Store.
Apple gave developers early access to iOS 14.3 on Tuesday, which will bring ProRAW support to the iPhone 12 Pro models. Plus, it and the iPad equivalent will give everyone more information about the privacy practices of the apps they use.
Apple also seeded to devs the release candidates for watchOS 7.2 and tvOS 14.3 on Tuesday.
What do you do when you pick up some food in the store, and want to quickly check how good or bad it is for you? You glance at the nutrition label, of course.
Throughout the last century, mandated labels on food forced manufacturers to reveal more and more information about the contents of their products — and their effects on people who consume them. Now Apple is bringing that same level of insight to apps in the App Store.
It’s about time!
As apps become ever more central to our lives — with increasing access to our most sensitive personal data — transparency about exactly how developers use that information is becoming more necessary than ever.
The internet changed a lot about how we communicate. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the sensitivity of giving out your personal phone number to randos.
Craigslist, Tinder dates — heck, even work associates — there are lots of people you might not want to be able to reach you on a whim. This inexpensive private phone line offers an invaluable buffer between you and the unknown.
A French antitrust complaint against Apple targets an iOS 14 feature that makes it tougher for companies to indiscriminately use tracking technology for mobile advertising.
The anti-tracking feature previously faced criticism, unsurprisingly, from companies that work in mobile advertising. However, this is the one of the first legal actions taken against Apple due to the feature.
If you’ve already updated to iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, you might be wondering why green or orange dots sometimes appear in the corner of your screen on iPhone and iPad. It’s not the result of a strange bug.
Instead, those dots are there to help protect your privacy. When they appear, it means certain features on your device are in use, and it’s important to look out for them. Here’s why.
Apple pushed back the release of a major privacy change previously coming in iOS 14. It would have required each iPhone application to specifically ask if it can track the user for advertising purposes.
Most people are expected to deny access, which would shake up the advertising business.
People don’t walk around announcing their recent purchases to strangers. Or yell out to the whole office what they think of their coworkers. Or reveal where they live to people on the street. But they do violate their own privacy in a new Apple video, created to point out that owning a rival smartphone is the digital equivalent of oversharing.
Watch it now:
Push a button in Safari and you’re in Private Browsing Mode. Suddenly, you’re completely safe from all tracking, and no one can tell what you did online, right? Wrong.
This mode really can help protect your privacy when you’re surfing the web, but you need to know its limitations.
Facebook is concerned that one of the big new features in iOS 14 will hurt the social networking giant’s ad-targeting business model.
As reported by CNBC, Facebook CFO David Wehner said Thursday that Apple’s new feature for the upcoming operating system, which allows users to see how activity is being tracked across apps and websites, will make things tough on Facebook ads.
Facebook Messenger’s new App Lock feature lets you add an extra layer of security to the popular chat app. iPhone and iPad users can switch on Face ID or Touch ID so they never need to worry about anybody seeing their messages.
The previously rumored feature, which Facebook rolled out for iOS devices Wednesday, is easy to enable. Plus, you can tweak a setting to make sure App Lock works ideally for you. Here’s all you need to do to turn on Face ID or Touch ID for Facebook Messenger.
A group of digital advertising associations in Europe have taken issue with Apple’s plan to offer users notifications on which apps track them to offer personalized ads.
At WWDC 2020, Apple announced new tools for iOS and iPadOS that let users better control which apps track them by asking for permission in the form of pop-up messages. The next versions of the iPhone and iPad operating systems will reveal to users what type of data different apps collect. But the digital advertising companies say that this could carry a “high risk of user refusal.”
The next iPhone and iPad operating systems warn you when the microphone or camera is on, let you share your approximate location, and block apps from tracking you. And these are just some of the ways iOS 14 and the iPad equivalent protect user privacy. Apple is clearly working hard to live up to its promise that it regards privacy as a fundamental human right.
The Indiana Supreme Court has ruled that police cannot constitutionally force a person to unlock their smartphone by giving up their passcode. The ruling, made Tuesday, has been praised by the Electronic Frontier Fountain (EFF).
Even though Google pays a hefty sum to stay the default iPhone search engine, an industry analyst suggests Apple should buy rival DuckDuckGo anyway.
That likely wouldn’t be the end of Google and Apple’s cooperation on search, according to AllianceBernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi. But it would strengthen Apple’s bargaining position.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is questioning Apple over privacy concerns raised by an ex-contractor who transcribed users’ Siri requests in an effort to improve the voice assistant’s functionality.
Former Apple contractor Thomas le Bonniec this week said Apple should be “urgently investigated” over Siri data collection. It seems that the EU’s data protection authorities are listening.
The first version of Apple and Google’s contact-tracing API will reportedly roll out April 28, Apple CEO Tim Cook says.
As noted by French language website iGeneration, Cook revealed the launch date to European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who then shared it during a press conference held Wednesday.
Sen. Josh Hawley wants Apple and Google to have some skin in the game when it comes to keeping data private in their joint coronavirus contact-tracing project. Hawley’s idea? That the Apple and Google CEOs — Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, respectively — should take personal responsibility for ensuring the data is kept private.
“If you seek to assure the public, make your stake in this project personal,” the Republican senator from Missouri wrote Tuesday in a letter to Cook and Pichai. “Make a commitment that you and other executives will be personally liable if you stop protecting privacy, such as by granting advertising companies access to the interface once the pandemic is over.”
The American Civil Liberties Union said Friday it is cautiously encouraged by a commitment to privacy by Apple and Google as they develop Bluetooth-based contact-tracing technology to track the spread of COVID-19.
But the civil liberties group says the two tech giants must resolve “certain important privacy-related questions” key to winning trust from a public growing wary about who sees their data.
The world was starting to develop a healthy skepticism for tech companies and their claims of making data privacy a priority. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal seemed to get our attention and we began to understand how easy it is for groups to track our digital lives.
Then COVID-19 spread with bullet speed across the world and now surveillance of our movements to track the virus is sounding to many like a good idea.
Germany and Taiwan are cracking down on governmental use of videoconferencing app Zoom amid concerns that it might be too risky to use.
In an internal memo, the German foreign ministry restricted use of the service. The country said security and data-protection weaknesses make Zoom too dangerous to use, according to newspaper Handelsblatt. Taiwan also banned official use of Zoom for the same reasons.
Outrun is a privacy-focused run-tracking app that integrates with the Health app. (It’s also a seminal arcade racing game from 1986, but that’s not what we’re talking about today.) The Outrun running app is a great alternative to all those running and cycling apps that upload and/or sell your data to anyone who wants it, or drive you crazy with ads. Or both.
Apple’s newest iPad Pro has the ability to disconnect its microphone when the device is not in use for increased security. The disconnect happens at a hardware level so software cannot override it — but there’s a catch.
The feature only works for you if you have the right accessories.
Video-conferencing tool Zoom is seeing a surge in use during the coronavirus pandemic, due to people being stuck at home and unable to meet in meatspace groups. I’ve read about people using Zoom to drop in on yoga and pilates classes, as well as for more usual business-related activities.