Someone gaining access to that account, through a data breach or by other means, would have access to anything stored there.

Prior to today, storing a complete backup of your device, including your private photos and files, on a server-where someone other than you has access to it-has meant entering a data-privacy minefield. Many people enable iCloud backups because their iPhone bothers them repeatedly to do so, and perhaps they haven’t thought through the implications. End-to-end encryption is common in secure messaging apps like Signal, as well as in software that stores sensitive data, such as password managers. Once you enable Advanced Data Protection, not even Apple will have the key to decrypt your data-and therefore it will have no way to help you regain access if you lose it. This protection allows for private communication between a sender and a receiver-in this case, you’re both-such that third parties can’t access the data. End-to-end encryption ensures that only you control that key. Here’s why.Įncryption is a mathematical process that jumbles data in a way that makes it unreadable without a key. But now that the feature is here, everyone should turn it on. A couple of years ago, Reuter's reported that Apple had dropped a plan to encrypt backups after the FBI complained about it. That meant police could subpoena those backups and gain access to texts. In particular, although conversations in Messages (along with other more personal data types, like the data stored in the Health app) were end-to-end encrypted, backups of those conversations were not. iCloud backups of the Messages app were of particular concern because Apple could still hand over certain types of data within the backups to law enforcement. The fact that iCloud backups haven’t offered the option of end-to-end encryption until now has long been a point of controversy. That means you can finally enable end-to-end encryption for your iCloud backups so no one but you-not even Apple-can access your iCloud data.

Apple just rolled out iOS 16.2, a software update that includes a key new feature called Advanced Data Protection for iCloud.

Into the Breach instal the new for ios