Apples efforts to bring privacy to the masses will change the web
Apple has announced a swathe of upgrades for its tablet, phone and computer operating systems that could change the way millions of people’s data is transmitted over the internet – a boon for privacy enthusiasts, but a potential problem for advertisers, law enforcement agencies and governments.
At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday, the company announced that upcoming updates to its web browser will offer an anonymous browsing feature called Private Relay. This will disguise user details from website operators by using a series of intermediary servers. Software to do this, such as the Tor network, already exists, but Apple’s move will make this kind of obfuscation far more mainstream.
The voice-recognition assistant Siri will also process audio on the device, rather than sending it to Apple servers for analysis, and changes to Apple’s email app will stop senders tracking when a message has been read and the IP address from which it was accessed.
