The Pegasus spyware sold by NSO Group, supposed to only be available to law enforcement and intelligence agencies for legitimate and legal uses, appears to be widely available to repressive governments with little oversight.
An attempt by major Chinese tech firms to circumvent Apple's new app tracking rules appears to have been shuttered. Apple sent a clear message to developers in the Chinese apps market that there would be no exemptions from its global rules.
As Apple fends off a variety of antitrust probes, one of the chief arguments it has put forward centers on platform privacy and security. Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European Commission, is having none of it.
New report from Apple serves as an invective against the practice of sideloading apps to get around the App Store rules. Apple characterizes any sideloaded app as a "serious security risk.”
Apple is feeling pressure to reaffirm its privacy stance due to two recent news stories: its cooperation with subpoenas from the Trump administration that saw phone data handed over, and a case in which iPhone repair techs stole compromising photos.
Currently slated for a September release, iOS 15 will implement enhanced privacy controls for Siri's speech recognition and email privacy as well as a new "privacy report" feature.
Facebook is employing some creative new tactics in its extended battle with Apple. A paid academic study concludes that Apple's new privacy policies in iOS 14 are anticompetitive.
Faced with unrelenting policy, Apple has reportedly turned over servers containing iCloud data to the charge of the Chinese government.
Apple boasts of stopping some $1.5 billion in attempted app fraud in 2020 and removing one million malicious apps, but complaints of app-based scams are still quite common.
Apple sells itself to consumers on security and privacy, and one of the building blocks of that ecosystem is its App Store policies. Should Epic's antitrust lawsuit succeed, the "walled garden" may be breached.
