BRITS will lose access to a powerful iPhone security feature designed to protect you from spying.
It comes after the UK government demanded access to the private data of iPhone owners.
All iPhones in Britain will lose access to an important safety feature[/caption]
The feature is called Advanced Data Protection, and it’s meant to keep your iCloud back-ups safe.
iCloud is where your photos, videos, and texts are stored as back-ups – so if you ever lose or upgrade your iPhone, you can restore them on the new one.
This is some of the most private info an iPhone owner can have, so protecting it is especially important.
With Advanced Data Protection switched on, the contents of your iCloud back-ups are encrypted.
That means no one else but you can see them. Even Apple can’t view them, which means it can’t share them with the police or spies.
Apple says that the feature is meant to protect you, and that building a backdoor into the setting would put users at risk from hackers.
Now to comply with the Government, Advanced Data Protection will have to be removed.
That means anything that you’ve got stored in iCloud will no longer be encrypted.
Any of the info can be accessible by Apple, and ultimately shared on to police with a warrant.
The tech giant says it’s “gravely disappointed” that the feature has been removed for Brits.
“Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature,” Apple explained in a statement.
“ADP protects iCloud data with end-to-end encryption, which means the data can only be decrypted by the user who owns it, and only on their trusted devices.
“We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy.
“Enhancing the security of cloud storage with end-to-end encryption is more urgent than ever before.
“Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom.
“As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.”
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