Apple Adds Advanced Data Protection To The iCloud

End To End Encryption For Most

Today Apple announced several new features to their services, including an expansion of the end to end encryption offered in iCloud.  Previously quite a bit of your iCloud data was encrypted en route to the cloud, but your photos, notes, voice memos, reminders, and Safari bookmarks were not.  Most importantly the iCloud backups of the contents of your devices were not properly encrypted during transmission, but that can all change now.

If you enable the new optional feature called Advanced Data Protection on your iThangs you can now rest assured that your backups cannot be intercepted on their way to safety.  If you are a member of the Apple Beta Software Program then take a look for it now, US based users of all sorts will see it by year’s end and everyone else gets to wait until sometime in 2023.

That’s not all either, they also announced support for third party physical hardware security keys and specialized protections for those that are often targeted for harassment and cyber-attacks, such as journalists.  Ars Technica offers link to the main announcement here.

They also decided to dump their plans to sniff through your photos, which you can read about below.