A new privacy feature in iOS 14 has exposed a number of popular apps and raised concerns about clipboard privacy. In the video above, I explain why this is worrying, but it’s not something to worry about.
A small feature in iOS 14 that Apple didn’t highlight on stage has received a lot of attention as users have started testing the developer’s beta. Users on Twitter and YouTube have noticed that iOS 14 will alert you when an open app accesses your phone’s clipboard, and it turns out that a surprising amount of applications read your clipboard every time they launch.
Ars Technica has compiled a list of over 30 apps that access the clipboard when started. The most prominent of these applications is TikTok, which a Twitter user realized was reading his clipboard every few keystrokes.
Tik Tok saying The edge that this was an antispam feature and that they would remove it with a future update.
While it is troubling to see how many applications have been unknowingly accessing the clipboard, it is important to remember that there are They are legitimate reasons for some applications to do so. Browser applications like Chrome look for URLs on the clipboard. The UPS application searches the clipboard for tracking numbers. These are clear and transparent reasons for an application to access clipboard information.
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But the security concern comes from applications that access this information for unclear reasons. Why does the PUBG game need to read my clipboard every time it starts?
I hope this iOS 14 feature embarrasses app developers to be more transparent about why they are accessing the clipboard and what they are doing with that information. But for now, the best thing to do is be careful not to copy confidential information to the clipboard.
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