A secret court hearing on iCloud encryption began on Friday, amid calls in both the UK and US to make the proceedings public.
The British government is demanding that Apple create backdoor access, not just for the personal data of British citizens, but for all iCloud users worldwide …
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Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP) is a privacy feature very few people have been using. Non-techies had never heard of it, and even some geeks hadn’t enabled it.
So Apple standing up to the UK government’s attack on ADP might not seem a big deal – but I’d argue that it’s way more important than it might seem, for three reasons …
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In a world in which privacy is a hot-button issue, we might have expected Brits to be outraged that their government was responsible for Apple withdrawing Advanced Data Protection from the UK. In reality, it’s gone largely unremarked.
A new Bloomberg piece suggests that’s because people care far less about privacy than they claim. While I do think there’s some truth to that, it’s not the primary reason …
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By default, iCloud data is secure while in transit. This data is stored in an encrypted format, while the encryption keys are housed in Apple data centers. 15 particularly sensitive data types, like passwords, Health data, and Journal data, use end-to-end encryption as standard. This sensitive data is encrypted with keys derived from your devices and device passcode, which are only accessible by the end user, and thus this data remains secure even in the case of a data breach in the cloud.
Advanced Data Protection, which is opt-in, provides end-to-end encryption for 10 additional iCloud data categories like Photos, Notes, and Reminders, meaning that Apple no longer possesses the keys to decrypt these categories as well.
It’s been couple of years since Advanced Data Protection rolled out. Are you using it? If not, should you consider using it? In this full tutorial and video walkthrough, I discuss what Advanced Data Protection is, how to enable it, and best practices for protecting your precious data. Be sure to subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube for more in-depth video walkthroughs.
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