Apple decided to take control of something that until now no one dared to touch. Leaks of personal data and other information about users. This information is used to target advertisements, but almost certainly not only for this. Many companies will lose billions because of Apple’s actions. Now that too – and it’s impossible to predict how Google will react to it. Apple’s previous initiative, security labels, has left Google confused. Since December 7 of last year, new apps and updates to existing ones are accepted on the App Store only when these shortcuts are provided. Labels are a list of user data that is collected by the application. We will return to this topic later, there is something new.
In the iOS / iPadOS 14.5 beta, it turns out that Google’s Safe Browsing service will not be able to collect data about Safari users. The service checks if the site the user is trying to visit is not fraudulent, for example, phishing, and whether it is blacklisted. Until now, before sending such a request, the URL of the suspicious site turned into a 32-bit hash, and the sender’s IP was added to it, without informing anyone about it, in a compressed form. Now, before sending a request to Google, traffic is redirected to the Apple proxy service, which changes the sender’s IP to the IP of one of the Apple servers created specifically for this.
Why you need Google Safe Browsing
This service was developed for Google Chrome and has become one of the important competitive advantages of this browser. Based on the service, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) were developed, which made it possible to implement support for this service in other browsers. The service is used in Firefox and Safari, and a number of others. This is indeed a great service that has saved the users of the browsers in which it is used, money, nerves, health, and possibly life.
Somewhere in Google, there is a “black list” of hundreds of thousands or even millions of URLs for suspicious sites. The service uses algorithms to detect phishing. If the result is positive, the loading of the site is interrupted, the user is informed about the reason for the blocking. In parallel with this, it is checked whether the requested URL is included in the blacklist. If the suspicions are confirmed, and the resource is really dangerous, its loading is canceled.
IOS 14.5 security
Apple didn’t even hope that no one would find out about this innovation. Developers, as soon as the first beta of the next version of iOS and / or iPadOS falls into their hands, study it carefully (and not without pleasure). And they could not fail to notice the appearance of proxy: safebrowsing.apple , to which traffic is redirected instead of safebrowsing.googleapis.com . The service works no worse than in iOS / iPadOS 14.4 and earlier. The head of WebKit developers confirmed everything: that traffic is being redirected, that the IP of one of Apple’s servers is substituted for the user’s IP – by the way, he said about the servers created by Apple for this task. Fortunately, this service can be turned off if it suddenly starts behaving strangely.
