Apple redirects Google Safe Browsing traffic through proxy servers in iOS 14.5
I'm really tired of how much phone-home Apple products do these days.  At this point I don't even put a SIM in my phones any longer, and only permit them access via a travel router (which does have a SIM, for LTE backhaul) which runs a VPN client and on which I have root to inspect/block traffic.  My latest blog post shows the dozens of dozens of connections that a Mac running Big Sur will make just sitting idle at the desktop on a fresh install.Apple's products are only private if you want privacy from their commercial competitors. If you want privacy from Apple or the US federal government to which they provide tons of user data (without warrants(!) or due process), you're in for a constant uphill battle.Using everyday devices should not be creating hardware-serial-linked permanent records that the state can download at any time; to me that's stuff of a true dystopia.Apple has not yet integrated this viewpoint, and seem to regard privacy as only important against companies that aren't Apple.  Device backups (full message history and attachments), as well as Photos stored in iCloud, are not end to end encrypted permitting Apple (and by extension the state) to read and access all of it without your involvement.It's a bummer they're extending this attitude to browser-related traffic too. There seems to be a new trend inside of Apple that they're still figuring out here (see also: the addition of ContentFilterExclusionList in 11.0, and then its quick removal in 11.2).Did you know that if you entirely block access to all Apple hosts, you can't even add a Gmail account to an iPhone?