Apple dedicated a major portion of its WWDC 2021 keynote to privacy and with good reason. A significant number of announcements for its portfolio of devices focused on enhancing user security. iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey and watchOS 8 all have features that effectively help you remain more anonymous on the internet but some come at an extra cost.
Private Relay and Hide My Email
Apple's customised version of a VPN hides your identity by routing any requests that you make online through two separate relays. The user is given an anonymous IP that is still mapped to their region but hides their actual location. Unlike a VPN, this gives you no control over your choice of location. This effectively hides your information from the websites you are visiting, your network provider and even Apple.
Hide My Email generates a random email address that a user can then forward to their contacts or use to sign up for services. The mails that they get in response will still come to their main inbox but the user will get the benefit of keeping their email addresses private and away from prying hands.
Both of these are part of Apple's iCloud+, which will be given to existing iCloud members at no extra cost. In India, the plans for iCloud start at Rs 75 for 500GB and top out at Rs 749 for 2TB.
Another thing to note here is that these features only work with Apple's core apps like Safari and Mail.
HomeKit Secure Video
Another feature that is included with your iCloud+ is the ability to connect a larger number of home security cameras to your Apple devices using the Home app. The video feed that will be sent to your devices is end-to-end encrypted and the storage will not count against your existing iCloud capacity.
The video feed and activity detection for these cameras will first be analysed on-device before they are stored on iCloud.
Apple stomps out tracking pixels
When you open a newsletter in your inbox, it is usually embedded with 'tiny pixels' or small pixel-sized images that are automatically downloaded when you open the mail. This is used primarily to see how many people open the newsletters sent to them. The problem is it also tells them your IP address and your location. In a worst-case scenario, this can be used for nefarious purposes as well.
Apple's Mail app will come with built-in protection for this starting with iOS 15. This means companies will no longer be able to track you using invisible pixels. The feature works by hiding the user's email and IP address, so they can't be linked to determine a location.
App Privacy Reports in iOS 15
Starting with iOS 15, there will be a new section added to your device's privacy settings called App Privacy Report. This is a detailed listing of apps and the permissions that they use to gather information. When you permit an app to use your camera, for example, the privacy report will tell you how often that app used your camera and the frequency of its usage.
That's not all, privacy report will tell you detailed statistics divided according to the permissions you have given the apps installed on your device and order them accordingly.
Siri requests are now processed on-device
One of the major concerns with using virtual assistants is the headache of unwanted audio recordings. It's a privacy hassle and one that has gotten companies like Amazon into a lot of trouble.
Apple will now use on-device speech recognition for your audio when making requests to Siri. It also eliminates the need for an internet connection for basic tasks such as launching apps on your device, changing settings or scrolling through music.
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