Latest iOS 11 bug robs users of their privacy

The Asian Age With Agency Inputs

Technology, Mobiles & Tabs

iOS 11’s Siri reads messages from third party apps, even when the content is hidden in notifications.

Siri is able to read and dictate the messages when the option is enabled, i.e. when content is hidden from notifications.

Since its launch in September 2017, Apple’s iOS 11 has been laden with multiple bugs and issues. Apple has already rolled out numerous patches and updates to iron out the issues for all of its supported iPhones and iPads. However, no software is perfect and iOS 11 is still ridden with bugs and issues. The latest one to plague it is related to privacy controls while the device is locked.

A Mac Magazine report states that all iPhones and iPads on iOS 11 are plagued by privacy control issues. iOS 11 allows users to hide message content from displaying in the lock screen notification so as to prevent prying eyes from looking at your messages. The feature is enabled by default on the FaceID enabled iPhone X and has to be enabled from the Settings in all other iPhone and iPad models. In this state, even Siri is restricted from reading out the message content from Apple’s own Messages app as well as all the third-party messengers such as WhatsApp, Hike and others.

However, the report says that Siri is able to read and dictate the messages when the option is enabled, i.e. when content is hidden from notifications. With this bug, anyone can ask Siri to read the contents of the message and thus breach privacy.

The bug is claimed to be present in iOS 11.2.6 as well as the iOS 11.3 beta version. While Apple hasn’t released any statement related to the issue, it’s expected that the Cupertino giant could be rolling out the fix for the upcoming iOS 11.3 update.

(source)

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