To address these concerns, Google quickly came up with a safer approach to, um, “safe browsing”. (This API still exists, and is supported today as the “ Lookup API“.)
#COM APPLE SAFARI SAFEBROWSING SERVICE FULL#
Since Google’s servers received the full URL, as well as your IP address (and possibly a tracking cookie to prevent denial of service), this first API was kind of a privacy nightmare. In the earliest version, this was simply an API at Google that would allow your browser to ask Google about the safety of any URL you visited. Surely this could be deployed to protect users. Google also realized that, due to its unique vantage point, it had the most comprehensive list of those sites.
This included phishing pages, as well as sites that attempted to push malware at users. Several years ago Google noticed that web users tended to blunder into malicious sites as they browsed the web. What is “Safe Browsing”, and is it actually safe? Since we lack concrete information, the best we can do is talk a bit about the technology and its implications. Regardless of which users are affected, Apple hasn’t said much about the privacy implications of shifting Safe Browsing to use Tencent’s servers. However, it’s notable that Apple’s warning appears on U.S.-registered iPhones. The changes probably affect only Chinese-localized users (see Github commits, courtesy Eric Romang), although it’s difficult to know for certain. ( image source)Īs is the standard for this sort of news, Apple hasn’t provided much - well, any - detail on whose browsing history this will affect, or what sort of privacy mechanisms are in place to protect its users. This feature appears to be “on” by default in iOS Safari, meaning that millions of users could potentially be affected. This is being done as part of Apple’s “Fraudulent Website Warning”, which uses the Google-developed Safe Browsing technology as the back end.
It appears that, at least on iOS 13, Apple is sharing some portion of your web browsing history with the Chinese conglomerate Tencent. This morning brings new and exciting news from the land of Apple.
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