Protecting your privacy
Apple declares war on companies that track you online for marketing purposes
With Facebook’s privacy scandal, GDPR and targeted fake news, it’s been a turbulent year for companies that gather data on users and hire it out to clients. For Apple, which makes its money from hardware rather than personal data, it’s a vindication.
“One of the reasons people choose Apple products is because of our commitment to security and privacy,” said a slightly smug Craig Federighi.
Data contained in your iPhone or iCloud is already encrypted, and Apple has been nagging us all to activate two-factor authentication. Another issue, though, is information you send to websites, like passwords and credit card numbers. This is safeguarded in transit by the web’s SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) security protocol, but key risks are people guessing your weak passwords or a data breach leaking a password you’ve reused for multiple services. Now Mojave and iOS 12 will offer to create, store and autofill strong passwords, as opposed to simpler ones you can remember, both in Safari and within apps, and will spot duplicate passwords among your existing accounts and offer to replace them.
Yet another concern is ‘adtech’ tracking your web browsing habits. Some services you log into, such as Facebook, can associate data with your identity, but those that can’t still manage to track you between sites (although they don’t know who you are in real life) using a ‘fingerprint’ of your Mac or iOS device. This is based on technical data that websites can ask your web browser for, such as what fonts you have installed. With Mojave and iOS 12, less of this is revealed, so your Mac will look more like everybody else’s Mac. When sites and ads within them try to fingerprint your browser or use cookies to track you, alerts will either let you allow or deny them.
All of this applies only to Safari; other browser makers have their own tracking and ad-blocking options. To protect your privacy within other apps, they will need more explicit approvals from you before they can access features like your Mac’s camera and mic, or data such as your emails.