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At last year’s WWDC, Apple Intelligence certainly stole the show. I personally believe iOS 18 still would’ve been a very substantial software upgrade, even without a single AI upgrade.
One of the large non-AI upgrades in iOS 18, besides the fully redesigned Photos app, is actually a subtle yet massive win for user privacy. Here’s why.
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With iOS 18, third-party apps no longer have access to all of your contacts by default when you grant them permission to your contacts.
Every time an app requests contacts permissions, a screen will pop up – allowing users to pick and choose which contacts you’d like to share with a third party app. Apple also implemented a similar change when it comes to sharing your Photos library with third party apps a couple years ago.
Sharing all of your contacts with a third party app might not sound like a big deal. After all, we’ve been doing it for over a decade without thinking too much about it.
Sometimes, there might’ve been a good reason to want to share some contacts with an app. However, prior to iOS 18, it was an all or nothing choice. Now, you finally have granularity.
Huge privacy win
You may be wondering: why does this even matter?
Often times, when you grant an app permission to your contacts, it doesn’t just utilize the data for whatever feature it was requesting your contacts for. It’s pretty regular for apps to upload your entire contacts list, including addresses, phone numbers, emails, birthdays, and more – to their database. From The Washington Post:
An app only needs to get permission once through a quick context-free question that pops up as you’re installing it. And that information can be used to target ads or leaked online, revealing sensitive information about your network to people who might use it in scams.
Even if you later chose to revoke access to your contacts, you can’t take back what was already potentially collected.
One might think that ultimately, simple contact data isn’t that big of a deal to share. A lot of it might be out there anyways, and you’d have a fair point.
However, the bigger privacy concern is that apps can track who you know, and easily build a social web for any specific person. Then, they could sell that very valuable information to data brokers.
Now, with the new contact selection screen in iOS 18, you can ensure apps only see exactly what you want them to see.
Next time you see that new contact screen pop up, you should consider only sharing contacts that are absolutely necessary for whatever you’re trying to do. You can always add more later. Ultimately, the data you’re sharing isn’t your information to share, it’s everyone else’s – and companies have abused that.
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