Digital privacy had some big wins in 2023 thanks to Apple, Google, and Meta

Considering all the data we now store about our lives on our smartphones and in the cloud, it’s no wonder digital privacy is at the forefront of many consumers’ minds. The good news is that major technology companies—including some historically not very privacy-minded—have stepped up recently to improve user privacy.

Here are the companies that provided their customers with more privacy protections in 2023.

Apple

It’s no surprise Apple is on this list. The company has been the tech industry leader when it comes to consumer privacy. In recent years, Apple has launched new privacy feature after new privacy feature.

In 2022, Apple introduced what is arguably the company’s biggest privacy feature in its history, Advanced Data Protection. The feature allows users to end-to-end encrypt nearly all the data they store in iCloud and in iCloud backups.

And in 2023, Apple added another host of privacy protections to its iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Those protections include lockable private browsing tabs in Safari; link tracking protection in Mail, Messages, and Safari; and Lockdown Mode for Apple Watch.

And most recently Apple released iOS 17.2, which adds support for contact key verification in Messages. Contact key verification allows you to see and verify codes for a Messenger chat with the person you are messaging. If the chat’s code differs from the code the real recipient gives you, it means a bad actor is likely imitating them and you should cease all communication in that chat thread.

Google

Google is an advertising company, and advertising companies love to know as much about their users as possible. But Google has also been making some inroads with the privacy features it makes available to users, most recently with Google Maps.

Google Maps has gone through major changes as of late, but an upcoming change to the way the Google Maps app on your phone handles timelines is one of the most welcome. Google has announced that your location history—where you’ve been in the real world—that Google Maps saves to a feature in the app called Timeline, will soon be able to be saved directly on your device instead of in the cloud.

Since your Timeline shows you—or anyone with access to your Google account—exactly where you’ve been when, it can reveal the most intimate details of your daily life, such as doctors visits or trips to your preferred house of worship. But now that the data will soon be saved directly to your iPhone or Android phone, meaning only you can access it, it’s data that is now much more private.

If you would like to save your location history in an online backup, you can choose to do so, and now the data will be end-to-end encrypted, so even Google can’t read it. The new on-device location history will begin rolling out to Google Maps users over the coming year.

Meta

If there’s one company you generally don’t associate with “privacy” it’s Facebook owner Meta. But in 2023, Meta made what is arguably its biggest privacy enhancement ever: it began rolling out default end-to-end encryption for Facebook Messenger.

Yes, despite being one of the most-used message apps in the world, Facebook Messenger has lacked default end-to-end encryption for its entire existence—until now. Before this update, Facebook or anyone who could get access to Facebook’s data could read all your messages. With Messenger’s default end-to-end encryption, not even Facebook can read your chats.

One caveat: Messenger end-to-end encryption is currently only available for one-on-one chats, not group chats. But end-to-end encrypted group chats will be coming later. Still, end-to-end encrypted one-on-one Messenger chats are very welcome indeed and put Facebook Messenger more in part with other end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Apple’s iMessage, Meta’s WhatsApp, and Signal.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90997582/digital-privacy-had-some-big-wins-in-2023-thanks-to-apple-google-and-meta?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss