{"id":153457,"date":"2022-12-10T03:36:07","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T03:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/apples-new-advanced-data-protection-brings-more-security-and-encryption-to-icloud\/"},"modified":"2022-12-10T03:36:07","modified_gmt":"2022-12-10T03:36:07","slug":"apples-new-advanced-data-protection-brings-more-security-and-encryption-to-icloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/apples-new-advanced-data-protection-brings-more-security-and-encryption-to-icloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple’s new Advanced Data Protection brings more security and encryption to iCloud"},"content":{"rendered":"
Apple, the company whose CEO is fond of calling privacy a human right, has added a few new privacy features to its devices. One of them, Advanced Data Protection, is adding end-to-end encryption to almost every iCloud service out there. Which means that almost everything you upload to Apple’s cloud \u2014 from backups to photos \u2014 can only be accessed by you. That’s good for your privacy, which means the FBI isn’t thrilled about it.<\/p>\n
The updates are part of Apple’s years-long push to be known as the Big Tech company that cares and does more about its customers’ privacy than its competitors. And they come at a time when the need for this privacy is only that much more obvious. Apple products should no longer be assumed to be safe from hackers, and phishing scams \u2014 where you’re tricked into giving your account credentials to a hacker \u2014 are only getting more aggressive and convincing. At the same time, most people store a lot of personal and valuable information on cloud servers like iCloud, which only makes them that much more attractive of a target. The more options you have to help lock your data down, the better.<\/p>\n
The company announced the update on Wednesday, although the upgraded encryption won’t be available until the end of this year for US users and early next year for everyone else. When it does roll out, you’ll have to choose to enable it in your iCloud settings.<\/p>\n
Even if you don’t know much about internet security, you’ve probably heard at least something about encryption by this point, as the general public has become more aware of the need for it and more services that offer it have popped up. With end-to-end encryption, the data you send to iCloud can’t be read by anyone else as it travels to or from the cloud, nor can Apple see it when it’s stored on their servers. That helps protect your data from hackers who breach Apple’s servers. It’s less clear if you’d be safe from the types of <\/strong>people who notoriously broke into hundreds of iCloud accounts, including Jennifer Lawrence’s, through its website in 2014, but two-factor authentication and Security Keys, another feature that was announced on Wednesday, are specifically designed to protect against such phishing attacks. <\/p>\n Apple’s new security feature will also prevent law enforcement from accessing the data you have in iCloud. That’s why the FBI isn’t happy about Apple’s privacy tools. Law enforcement generally doesn’t like encryption that doesn’t give them a way to easily obtain your data from the third party that’s hosting it, which is something they do a lot. Governments around the world have repeatedly called on tech companies not to do what Apple just did, and Reuters reported a few years ago that Apple decided not to allow users to encrypt their iCloud backups after the FBI urged it not to (Apple has denied this) .<\/p>\n There’s been plenty of friction between Apple and the Department of Justice for years over Apple’s refusal to create a back door into its devices for law enforcement. In 2016 and in 2020, the DOJ tried to force Apple to help it break into the phones of mass shooters it suspected of having terrorist ties. Both times, Apple refused, and the FBI was (eventually and at great expense) able to hack into the phones without Apple’s help. In the 2020 case, Apple gave the FBI all of the data it had from the shooter’s iCloud account, even as the FBI groused about not being able to access the physical device. Now, with Advanced Data Protection enabled, Apple won’t even be able to give the FBI most of that iCloud data, either.<\/p>\n