Apple has responded to a New York Times report, claiming that it has removed various parental control apps from the App Store. Apple allegedly removed apps which offered similar features to its own Screen Time tool.
In response, Apple confirms that it did remove “several” such apps — but says that this was done due to privacy and security risks.
Apple CEO Tim Cook made an appearance at the TIME 100 Summit in New York City today where he spoke about leadership and innovation.
Cook sat down with Time managing editor Nancy Gibbs who asked about everything from education to privacy policy. Of course, politics came up as well. While Cook refrained from talking about his conversations with Donald Trump, he did warn the crowd that some issues like global warming are too big for us to rely on the government to fix.
Have you got some embarrassing entries in your Safari browsing history? Or maybe it’s a question of security: You don’t want your iPad’s history to fall into the wrong hands, etc.
Smutty jokes aside, there are plenty of legit reasons to clear your Safari history on your iPhone or iPad. And the good news is that Safari for iOS has some great tools for doing so. For example, did you know that you can clear just the last hour of browsing history, or the past couple of days?
Get ready to learn how to sanitize your Safari history on iOS devices.
An Apple employee was allegedly illegally harassed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) while passing through Customs. Andreas Gal, founder of Silk Labs, an AI startup acquired by Apple, says he was asked for the passwords to his Apple-issued phone and computer.
When he asked to speak with a lawyer, due to the contents being covered by a nondisclosure agreement, CBP officials reportedly refused. Instead, Gal was threatened with prosecution.
Apple is again using humor to get across a serious message. Its latest video has a young man using his iPhone to answer a personal question, and assures him that he isn’t being tracked while he’s doing so.
Watch it now:
One of the big threads running through Apple’s Monday keynote was the company’s insistence on user privacy. Apple would not, it suggests, share data with companies for Apple Card or Apple News+.
The new Apple TV channels, however, could be a little different. At least, according to an interview with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. Speaking at the Fintech Ideas Festival, Stephenson included Apple when talking about customer data analytics in HBO’s digital distribution deals. HBO is a division of AT&T’s WarnerMedia.
Want to delete your tweets? Maybe you don’t like keeping all those years-old opinions hanging around. Or maybe you just don’t like Twitter having so much info on you, all in one place. Or maybe you’re just sick of Twitter and want out, but not without nuking it from orbit before you go.
The trouble is, it takes an age to manually delete all your tweets. Unless you want to drive yourself crazy, you’ll need to use a third-party tool to do it.
While authorizing a third-party service to use your Twitter account might seem a bit scary, if you’re deleting everything anyway, who cares?
I picked Cardigan for this how-to, as it seems like the nicest of the tweet deleters. Here’s how to use it.
Apple’s latest video is a humorous take a serious topic. It reminds users of this company’s commitment to privacy with the tagline: “If privacy matters in your life, it should matter to the phone your life is on.”
Watch it now:
Even in the age of social media, our phones are one of the easiest ways for uninvited or unwanted contact. Privacy is hard to come by these days, so imagine being able to give your craigslist seller or Tinder date a phone number other than your real one. Or just having a dedicated line for work.
Apple’s CEO is optimistic about his company’s plan to have the iPhone store all our health records, even though it got a black eye recently: turns out some third-party iOS apps leaked health-related data to Facebook.
But Tim Cook says that people trust Apple because the company has a deep commitment to user privacy, and people know that.
Australia recently passed a law forcing tech companies to give law enforcement greater access to encrypted messages from users. The U.K. already has a similar law, and India is considering one.
There’s no new legislation in the U.S., but the FBI and other police agencies still want easy access to iPhones and other computers, as well as private conversations.
Deleting your Facebook account isn’t enough to stop some apps from sending deeply personal information about you to the social network.
The Wall Street Journal found a wide range of apps that send personal information to Facebook even if you don’t have an account. Health apps and real estate apps were discovered sending a lot of information to Facebook and the type of data might surprise you.
Apple has pulled all but one third-party SDK from Shazam in its latest update.
The move wipes out analytics firms, ad networks, open-source projects, and more — including Google AdMob, Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, and DoubleClick. Only HockeyApp, a Microsoft platform for beta testing, is still available.
How many time have you tried to remember that site where you read that thing last week? A million, probably. And how many times have you found it? Less than a million, for sure. But did you know that you can use Google to search only sites that you have visited?
You can, and it’s awesome.
Apple wants developers to be more transparent about the use of analytics code that lets them record how users interact with apps. Or else.
Hammering home its commitment to user privacy, Apple has contacted the makers of several apps recently highlighted as gathering screen-recording analytics data without properly disclosing it — and it wasn’t just for a friendly chat.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed plans to merge WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger — but says it probably won’t happen until 2020 at the earliest.
In a fourth-quarter earnings call this week, Zuckerberg also explained the reasons behind the plan, such as increased security with end-to-end encryption. Many questions still remain unanswered, however.
Apple just dealt Facebook a serious blow in retaliation for the social network’s recently pulled VPN app that was paying teens to take all their data from phones.
Facebook’s internal iOS apps no longer work after Apple revoked the certifications need to install the apps on employee’s iPhones. Everything from early builds of Facebook, Messenger and Instagram won’t even open. Even simple tools like a lunch menu are currently broken.
You know the Apple FaceTime bug that everyone’s going crazy about? It’s a huge screwup, for sure, but at least we know it’s just a bug. Being able to call someone and eavesdrop on their conversations without them knowing is clearly a privacy nightmare, which is why Apple disabled Group FaceTime until it can issue a proper fix.
Amazon, on the other hand, offers silent eavesdropping as a feature for its Echo speakers. It’s called Drop In, and if you’ve enabled it, you should probably turn it off.
Facebook will shut down the iOS version of its Research app after a TechCrunch report revealed how it was paying users aged 13-35 to install a VPN, allowing it to gather data on their phone and web activity.
This follows an incident last August in which Apple asked Facebook to remove its Onavo VPN from the App Store, since it was violating Apple’s data collection policies.
Malicious Siri Shortcuts are a real possibility warns one developer, so users need to start treating all of them as potential threats. He calls on Apple to fix their problems.
Shortcuts debuted last fall in iOS 12. They are small apps that can be used to automate iOS features. That apparently makes them well suited for creating malware.
Apple was made aware of a serious flaw in FaceTime over a week ago and ignored it, one user claims.
The bug, which allows callers to see and hear you before you’ve answered a Group FaceTime call, has forced Apple to disable the feature this week. But why wasn’t it recognized earlier?
Apple has confirmed that it’s possible for a FaceTime caller to listen to the person on the other end of the call — and even see them — before they pick up. Making use of this newly-discovered bug requires actions someone isn’t likely to do accidentally, which is probably why It wasn’t noticed during testing.
UPDATE: Apple said this evening it will quickly fix this serious privacy flaw. In the mean time, it has also disabled its servers needed for Group FaceTime to function.
Tim Cook has called for “comprehensive federal privacy legislation” in the U.S. that would fight the “shadow economy” of data brokers. Cook’s comments were made in an op-ed for Time Magazine, published today.
This is just the latest example of Cook calling out companies which make their money trading in user data, often gathered without the full understanding of users of a particular service.
You know how iOS’ accessibility features often prove handy for all users? Like Live Listen, which lets you turn your AirPods into remote listening devices? Or a combo of settings that resurrects an iPhone with a broken screen?
The same is true for Screen Time. This feature tracks how long you spend using apps every day, and can help you limit that time. But you can also use Screen Time to password-protect any app on your iPhone or iPad.
DuckDuckGo teamed up with Apple to protect user privacy for map and address-related searches. Their agreement gives users of the search engine access to continually updated maps, enhanced satellite imagery and more without exposing their data.
The pairing seems natural as both Apple and DuckDuckGo have taken strong stances on protecting user privacy.
