I‘ve done such a thorough job of de-Googling that I forgot to show up for a meeting with someone, because I hadn’t checked my Google calendar in ages. (No, they were not amused.) In my defense, I proceeded to explain to them that having de-Googled, I was also in the process of de-Appling, which is a special bonus level that those of us in the UK have unlocked.
If you’re reading this in the sunlit uplands, you need to start that too.
You need to start that because, as we recently learned, at some point in the very near future Apple is withdrawing its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature from the UK altogether as a result of the Home Office TCN through the Investigatory Powers Act.
Users who already had ADP enabled when the first TCN became public in February will be required to manually switch it off or lose their iCloud account.
I am not going to explain the chapter and verse of the legal saga today, because I prefer to do that for people who pay me to explain them the chapter and verse.
But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me.
When the whole debacle blew up in February, Apple announced that ADP would no longer be available for new users, but would remain unaffected for those of us who already had it activated. That assurance was nothing to sleep on, and so we have been waiting for the inevitable. Apple’s September update confirmed that its days are numbered:
For users in the UK who already enabled Advanced Data Protection, Apple will soon provide additional guidance. Apple cannot disable ADP automatically for these users. Instead, UK users will be given a period of time to disable the feature themselves to keep using their iCloud account.
So what does that mean for you? Again, from their September update:
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