Apple Facing Controversy over New Child Protection Features

The reputation of Apple is built on its commitment to privacy. The company has pushed for encrypted messaging across its ecosystem, imposed restrictions on how mobile apps can collect data, and fought law enforcement agencies looking for user information. Apple, on the other hand, has been disputing allegations that its next iOS and iPadOS releases will compromise customer privacy over the past week.

The controversy originates from Apple statement on Thursday. The concept is straightforward in theory: Apple wants to combat child sexual abuse and is taking greater steps to discover and prevent it. However, critics argue that method may erode consumers’ autonomy over their phones, leaving them reliant on the company’s guarantee not to abuse its position.

And  reaction has revealed exactly how complicated — and at times simply perplexing — the debate is. Apple has announced three changes for later this year, all of which are aimed at preventing child sexual exploitation, although they will affect separate apps with distinct feature sets. The first modification affects Search app as well as Siri. will direct users to resources for reporting child sexual abuse or getting help with an attraction to it if they search for topics related to it.

It’ll be available later this year on iOS 15, watchOS 8, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey, and it’ll be mostly uncontroversial. The other changes, on the other hand, have sparked significantly more controversy. One of them adds a parental control option to Messages, hiding sexually explicit images for users under the age of 18 and alerting parents if a kid under the age of 12 views or transmits such images.The last new function searches iCloud Photos for child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, and reports it to Apple administrators, who can then forward it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC.