Apple Child Safety Features

In iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, Apple has introduced Sensitive Content Warnings to prevent unsolicited nude photos and similar content coming through to your iPhone or iPad. Here's how to enable the feature. With Sensitive Content Warnings enabled in iOS 17, incoming files, videos, and images are scanned on-device and blocked if they contain nudity. The opt-in blurring can be applied to images in...

With the introduction of iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, Apple turned on Communication Safety, an opt-in feature that warns children when sending or receiving photos that contain nudity. It is enabled by default for children under the age of 13 who are signed in with an Apple ID and part of a Family Sharing group, but parents can also enable it for older teens as well. Communication Safety first...

Texas Governor Greg Abbott today signed into law the App Store Accountability Act, which will require Apple and Google to verify the age of App Store and Play Store users, respectively. The law will require users who are under the age of 18 to receive parental consent to download apps or make in-app purchases, according to Reuters. Apple CEO Tim Cook had reportedly asked Abbott to veto the...

Apple is facing a lawsuit seeking $1.2 billion in damages over its decision to abandon plans for scanning iCloud photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a report from The New York Times. Filed in Northern California on Saturday, the lawsuit represents a potential group of 2,680 victims and alleges that Apple's failure to implement previously announced child safety tools...

Apple on Thursday provided its fullest explanation yet for last year abandoning its controversial plan to detect known Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) stored in iCloud Photos. Apple's statement, shared with Wired and reproduced below, came in response to child safety group Heat Initiative's demand that the company "detect, report, and remove" CSAM from iCloud and offer more tools for...

Starting with iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma, Apple is making Communication Safety available worldwide. The previously opt-in feature will now be turned on by default for children under the age of 13 who are signed in to their Apple ID and part of a Family Sharing group. Parents can turn it off in the Settings app under Screen Time. Communication Safety first launched in the U.S. with...

Earlier this month, we noted Apple was working to expand its Communication Safety feature to additional countries, and it appears the next round of expansion will include six new countries. Communication Safety is an opt-in feature in the Messages app across Apple's platforms that is designed to warn children when receiving or sending photos that contain nudity. In the coming weeks, it will...

In recognition of Safer Internet Day today, Apple has highlighted the company's software features and tools designed to protect children online, such as Screen Time and Communication Safety. The press release was shared in Europe only. Communication Safety is an opt-in feature in the Messages app on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch that is designed to warn children when receiving or...

It has now been over a year since Apple announced plans for three new child safety features, including a system to detect known Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) images stored in iCloud Photos, an option to blur sexually explicit photos in the Messages app, and child exploitation resources for Siri. The latter two features are now available, but Apple remains silent about its plans for the CSAM...

The European Commission is set to release a draft law this week that could require tech companies like Apple and Google to identify, remove and report to law enforcement illegal images of child abuse on their platforms, claims a new report out today. According to a leak of the proposal obtained by Politico, the EC believes voluntary measures taken by some digital companies have thus far...

Apple is planning to expand its Communication Safety in Messages feature to the UK, according to The Guardian. Communication Safety in Messages was introduced in the iOS 15.2 update released in December, but the feature has been limited to the United States until now. Communication Safety in Messages is designed to scan incoming and outgoing iMessage images on children's devices for nudity...

Apple has quietly nixed all mentions of CSAM from its Child Safety webpage, suggesting its controversial plan to detect child sexual abuse images on iPhones and iPads may hang in the balance following significant criticism of its methods. Apple in August announced a planned suite of new child safety features, including scanning users' iCloud Photos libraries for Child Sexual Abuse Material...

More than a dozen prominent cybersecurity experts hit out at Apple on Thursday for relying on "dangerous technology" in its controversial plan to detect child sexual abuse images on iPhones (via The New York Times). The damning criticism came in a new 46-page study by researchers that looked at plans by Apple and the European Union to monitor people's phones for illicit material, and called...

In protest of the company's now delayed CSAM detection plans, the EFF, which has been vocal about Apple's child safety features plans in the past, flew a banner over Apple Park during the iPhone 13 event earlier this month with a message for the Cupertino tech giant. During Apple's fully-digital "California streaming" event on September 14, which included no physical audience attendance in...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has said it is "pleased" with Apple's decision to delay the launch of of its controversial child safety features, but now it wants Apple to go further and completely abandon the rollout. Apple on Friday said it was delaying the planned features to "take additional time over the coming months to collect input and making improvements," following negative...

Apple has delayed the rollout of the Child Safety Features that it announced last month following negative feedback, the company has today announced. The planned features include scanning users' iCloud Photos libraries for Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), Communication Safety to warn children and their parents when receiving or sending sexually explicit photos, and expanded CSAM guidance...

Respected university researchers are sounding the alarm bells over the technology behind Apple's plans to scan iPhone users' photo libraries for CSAM, or child sexual abuse material, calling the technology "dangerous." Jonanath Mayer, an assistant professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University, as well as Anunay Kulshrestha, a researcher at Princeton University...

An international coalition of more than 90 policy and rights groups published an open letter on Thursday urging Apple to abandon its plans to "build surveillance capabilities into iPhones, iPads, and other products" – a reference to the company's intention to scan users' iCloud photo libraries for images of child sex abuse (via Reuters). "Though these capabilities are intended to protect...

Developer Asuhariet Yvgar this morning said that he had reverse-engineered the NeuralHash algorithm that Apple is using to detect Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM) in iCloud Photos, posting evidence on GitHub and details on Reddit. Yvgar said that he reverse-engineered the NeuralHash algorithm from iOS 14.3, where the code was hidden, and he rebuilt it in Python. After he uploaded his...

Member of the German parliament, Manuel Höferlin, who serves as the chairman of the Digital Agenda committee in Germany, has penned a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, pleading Apple to abandon its plan to scan iPhone users' photo libraries for CSAM (child sexual abuse material) images later this year. In the two-page letter (via iFun), Höferlin said that he first applauds Apple's efforts to...

Security research firm Corellium this week announced it is launching a new initiative that will "support independent public research into the security and privacy of mobile applications," and one of the initiative's first projects will be Apple's recently announced CSAM detection plans. Since its announcement earlier this month, Apple's plan to scan iPhone users' photo libraries for CSAM or...

Apple today shared a document that provides a more detailed overview of the child safety features that it first announced last week, including design principles, security and privacy requirements, and threat model considerations. Apple's plan to detect known Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) images stored in iCloud Photos has been particularly controversial and has prompted concerns from...