Apple’s iOS mobile operating system has begun redirecting web traffic from Google’s Safe Browsing security tool, which detects fraudulent web pages, to the company’s own proxy servers to reduce the risk of leaks and improve privacy.
These changes have been made effective in the beta version of iOS 14.5 and have been confirmed on Twitter by Maciej Stachowiak, responsible for Apple’s WebKit, after their publication on the 8-Bit portal.
So far, tools such as the pre-installed iOS browser, Safari, make traffic go through the servers of Safe Browsing, a Google tool that prevents access to malicious web pages, both cases of malware and phishing, as Google explains on their website.
However, starting with the beta version 14.5 1 (V.2) of iOS, Safari changes its strategy and begins to redirect traffic to Apple servers through proxy, so that web traffic stops passing through the servers of Google. In this way, although the Google tool is still used, data protection is improved and “the risk of a potential data leak is limited“, as Stachowiak has assured.
Though, Apple explains on its website that the use of Google Safe Browsing can be disabled through the Safari settings, in the Fraudulent page alerts section, and that the address of the web pages is never shared with this tool, but the user’s IP address.
Source: dpa
