What New Features?
Apple has always touted their security as a core selling point of their devices. Throughout their history, they have been regularly classified as one of the most secure devices on the market and has moved the high tech industry to create more secure devices. IOS 14 was no exception, bringing many new features to improve security and anti-tracking practices.
Here are some of the top features:
Camera/Mic Active Visibility - iOS 14 now shows a green light if the camera is in use, and an orange light if the microphone is in use
Copy & Paste Visibility - You now get an alert if an app used the clipboard
Location Control - You can control if an app gets precise location or a more generalized location
Limiting Local Storage Access - You can control how much access an app gets to your photos
WiFi Privacy - Your MAC address is changed each time you start your device, to make it harder for apps to track your movement from your MAC address.
Network Access - You can tell an app not to access other devices on your network.
Compromised Passwords - If you use Apple’s password manager, you can now enable a feature that will search for known compromised passwords.
There are quite a few new features that I didn’t list, but a quick search at ArsTechnica can show you the rest. They do a much better job reviewing all the new features than me.
Why I think this Important
While I don’t think Apple is a perfect company, they do several things well. Many companies today make a lot of money off of peoples data and they show it in the way they design their apps and their operating systems. These app and system developers hide lots of information behind the scenes, as they gobble up data on how you use apps, your preferences and on your location when using these apps.
Apple doesn’t. They make it very clear in every step they take to show that they are not interested in peoples data. It is further proven in iOS 14 that they want to give people that own their devices full disclosure of how companies can access their information behind the scenes. There are many companies that don’t like it when Apple does that, because many times Apple just blocks those apps from sending that data, instead of disclosing that information because it is easier from a privacy standpoint to block information than to share with the user who’s accessing that information. While Apple barrels forward towards higher privacy, companies like Facebook don’t want them to do that because it impacts their bottom line: selling people’s data to the highest bidder.
As we march forward to better data privacy, these features brought to us by companies that care about our privacy will shake up the way data is passed through. While I know its a long road. I would say the first step is disclosure. Some people might not mind the more personalized ads for products they might use. But the less we know about the practices of these companies, the more likely we are going to “just say no” because we don’t know what they are doing with what we give them.
As I always say there is profit in obfuscation.
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