Apple activates nudity blurring for children users in Australia
Apple from today is rolling out its much debated measure to protect child users from nude images in Australia.
Apple from today is rolling out its much debated measure to protect child users from nude images in Australia.
Apple is harnessing artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify harmful images sent to young people in its Messages app on the iPhone, iPad and Mac. It sees the move as countering grooming of young people by paedophiles.
The aim is totally laudable. But the child safety protection measure has attracted criticism from privacy advocates in the US. They claim the measure suggests that Apple has found a way to snoop on messages sent to a user’s phone or tablet. They claim Apple is breaching a child’s privacy, and children are consumers too.
Apple’s counter argument is that the company never sees any of a device’s content as the vetting of images is done entirely on the device. Images never leave a device and are never seen by Apple.
It further argues the feature is voluntary; parents have to activate it on their child’s device using the iOS operating system’s parental controls features.
Once activated, children who receive these images are sent a warning about the content, links to resources including Australia’s Kids Helpline, and told it is okay not to open it. They are given an option to message someone they trust for help.
Children also are warned if they try to send harmful content to others.
“Anything that enhances the safety and wellbeing for children in the online environment is something we would welcome”, said Tony FitzGerald , virtual services manager, yourtown which operates Kids Helpline.
The feature originally was slated for around September last year, but Apple delayed its rollout due to these privacy concerns. It eventually activated it in the US as part of iOS15.2, iPadOS15.2 and macOS12.1 in December last year.
It is now being rolled out in Australia from today as part of an update to iOS15.5 and iPadOS15.5, and is also due for rollout in the UK, Canada and New Zealand. Apple says it requires accounts to be set up as families in iCloud.
There are caveats. The child safety feature only works for the Messages app, so parents will have to restrict their children’s access to other social media and chat apps should they want to counter images sent from those sources. A parent can disable chosen apps using Apple’s parental controls.
Also, the feature may not prevent a child being sent nude content embedded in a video.
There is the question of what age group it should apply to. When does a parent start to respect a child or young teenager’s right to privacy on their phone? When are they treated as a grown up?
Apple says it also has updated Siri, Spotlight, and Safari search to “intervene” when users perform searches for queries related to child exploitation.
The upgrade also lets users activate an app privacy report which details how often apps access user data, such as location, camera, microphone, and other device features.
The iPhone and iPad already notifies users when apps seek to access personal information; users can deny the access. This feature led to a confrontation between Apple and Facebook in 2019.
The privacy report offers a rearview mirror breakdown of the access that permitted apps took advantage of. Apple says users can view each app‘s network activity and website network activity, and web domains that apps connect to most frequently.
Another feature, Privacy Relay, lets users hide their real IP address when browsing with Safari. Apple substitutes a random IP. The feature, introduced with iOS15 and iPadOS15, acts like a VPN app, disguising the source of browser queries.
Apple has cast itself as a privacy doyen and a contrast to Google whose business model centres around the harvesting of personal data.
However, Apple has received flack for accepting billions of dollars to use Google Search as its default search engine and to host Google apps which have a history of collecting user information. The company says Google apps have to meet the same privacy standards as other apps.
Apple overnight released a new privacy ad that warns of the danger of personal information being collected and resold by information brokers.
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