Apple previews Lockdown Mode
Let&#x27;s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.<p>This is a <i>huge</i> step forward for iPhone users. Look, I get it. From the typical HN perspective, this potentially looks like a lot of hype. But many of you aren&#x27;t looking at from a high level.<p>In the world we are now living in; even what&#x27;s happening in the United States right now, being able to protect yourself from well-funded, determined attackers for the average person couldn&#x27;t come at a better time.<p>There&#x27;s a huge gap between Fortune 500 executives, government officials, etc. and regular people in terms of the resources available to them to prevent state-sponsored attackers. It doesn&#x27;t take much these days to go from a nobody to being on somebody&#x27;s radar.<p>If you&#x27;re a woman seeking an abortion in a state where it&#x27;s illegal or severely restricted, you could be the target of malware from your local or state government or law enforcement. In Texas, you can sue anyone who aids and abets a woman who attempts to get an abortion for $10,000, which is enough to get someone to trick someone into installing malware on a phone.<p>No, it&#x27;s not China or Russia coming for you but it doesn&#x27;t take much to ruin someone&#x27;s life.<p>I don&#x27;t think this is virtue signaling or marketing hype by Apple; if anything, this is right in alignment with the stance they&#x27;ve had on privacy for years. Even for a company the size of Apple, putting up $10 million to fund organizations that investigate, expose, and prevent highly targeted cyberattacks isn&#x27;t pocket change.<p>At the end of the day, this is all good news for user privacy and security going forward. I also suspect if I lockdown my iPhone, my other compatible devices using the same Apple ID will also lockdown. No IT department required.