Apple’s upcoming iOS 14.5 release includes a feature that will redirect all of Safari’s Safe Traffic through Apple – controlled proxy servers as a solution to maintain users’ privacy and prevent Google from entering the IP addresses of iOS to teach users.
The new feature, spotted by a Reddit user earlier this week and covered in an 8-bit report, was formally confirmed by Maciej Stachowiak, Head of Webkit Engineering at Apple.
The new feature will only work when users enable the “Fraudulent Website Alert” option in the iOS settings for the Safari app.
This enables support for Google’s Safe Browsing technology in Safari. Safe Browsing technology works by sending a URL that the user is trying to access, sending the URL anonymously to Google’s Safe Browsing servers, where Google accesses the site and searches for threats.
If malware, phishing scams or other threats are found on the site, Google tells the user’s Safari browser to block access to the site and display a red alert in full screen.
When Google introduced the Safe Browsing API years ago, the company knew which sites a user was visiting; Over the past few years, Google has taken several steps to anonymize data sent from the user’s devices via the Safe Browsing feature.
But although Google has anonymized URL strings, Google still sees the IP address from which to send a secure browse check by sending the link in a clipped and hurried state.
Apple’s new feature basically takes all these Safe Browsing checks and sends them through an Apple proxy server so that all requests come from the same IP address.
Many would call the move useless, as Google still cannot see which URL the user is checking, but the feature is similar to other measures Apple has taken recently, and focuses on improving user privacy.
Many of these features have often affected and disrupted Google’s large presence in the user analytics and tracking sector.
This includes pioneering broad-based anti-detection features in Safari, and forcing app manufacturers to add ‘privacy labels’ to their App Store listings, a requirement that Google has mysteriously avoided by simply not having any of its programs since last year.
iOS 14.5 is currently in beta and is expected to be released in the coming months.