Everything you need to know about Apple’s changes to encryption in the UK

Apple today announced that it has removed its Advanced Data Protection feature in the UK. The decision comes after the UK government ordered Apple to build a worldwide backdoor into iCloud encryption. Instead of complying with that order, Apple chose to remove the feature in the UK. There’s a huge piece of nuance getting missed in a lot of the coverage of today’s announcement. Apple is not “removing end-to-end encryption” from the UK as some headlines have suggested. The company is removing the Advanced Data Protection feature, yes, but that feature exists separately from Apple’s broader end-to-end encryption efforts. By default, iCloud offers end-to-end encryption for 15 different data categories. In December 2022, Apple introduced Advanced Data Protection as a separate, opt-in way for users to protect additional categories of iCloud data. If you opt-in to Advanced Data Protection, the number of data categories protected by end-to-end encryption increases. It’s those additional cat ... Read full article.