iOS 14 flags TikTok, 53 other apps spying on iPhone clipboards | | Sexy selfies? Passwords copied from your password manager? Bank account information? Bitcoin addresses? Yes, yes, scary yes, yes. Anything you’ve copied recently, they’ll paste it into themselves. Such data is typically used for advertising and tracking purposes. | The covert content copying is possible not only for a device’s local data, but also on nearby devices, as long as the devices share the same Apple ID and are within about 10 feet of each other. That’s enabled by Apple’s universal clipboard: a clipboard that enables content to be copied on one device and then pasted into an app running on a separate device. | The iOS 14 developer beta release – which you can download and install now to get an eyeful of this behavior – comes with a feature that’s custom-tailored to spotlight this kind of thing: namely, a banner warning that pops up every time an app reads clipboard contents. How many apps snoop on clipboards, and how often? A whole lot, and quite frequently, as was discovered by many of the people who began testing the beta release. A video, posted on 23 June, had been viewed by over 118,000 people as of Tuesday, 30th June and demonstrates apps getting flagged by iOS 14 as they read content. | All these apps copying clipboard content have been doing so surreptitiously. They’ve been tough to spot. The issue underscores what an important update the new warning in iOS 14 is, and Apple plans to credit the researchers for being the impetus for the new notification. The scenario is worse on Android than it is on iOS, given that Android APIs are far more lenient. For example, Android allowed apps running in the background to read the clipboard up until Version 10, as opposed to iOS apps, which can do so only when they’re active, as in, running in the foreground. | |
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