You can always tell when the launch of a new iPhone is approaching. Stories about Apple that would be considered trivial under normal circumstances suddenly become big news. People start to pay attention to every tiny piece of information that comes out of the company’s head office, and sometimes they even try to read between the lines and see things that aren’t there. Every iPhone launch comes with rumors. Some of them turn out to be accurate, and others turn out to be false. Even with all of that being said, though, the launch of a new iPhone is generally a positive experience for both the company and its millions of admirers.

That might not be the case this time around.

Courting Bad Press

We understand the desire to keep information close to your chest when you have a new product or service to launch, but Apple has said very little about what the iPhone 12 may or may not be able to do ahead of its launch, and also refused to confirm or deny some of the things that people have been saying about it. In that total absence of solid or dependable news, people have begun to make up stories – including one which paints the company in a negative, cash-grabbing light.

If experienced and influential Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is to be believed, the phone won’t come with Ear Pods. That would be a huge mistake. For all of the past decade, every major smartphone created by every major producer has come with headphones. Apple is big in the headphones market. They make AirPods, and they charge a premium for AirPods. Given the cost of a new iPhone, there’s no legitimate reason for not including a set of AirPods (or at least EarPods) in the box as part of a purchase. If Apple hasn’t done this, as Kuo suspects, then it’s a cynical move designed to push customers toward paying even more money for AirPods in a separate purchase.

If these reports are true, this would be the first iPhone in history to launch without a means of listening to music without irritating the people around you. Given the fact that AirPods generally cost somewhere around $200, and factoring in the anticipated $700-$800 cost of a new iPhone, you’re approaching a four-figure spend if you want both the handset and the earbuds. Many people will feel that’s too high a price to pay.

Still Behaving Badly

If the only piece of bad press about Apple that had come out during the past few days concerned its policy on earphones, it wouldn’t be a major issue. Unfortunately for Apple, there’s also a far less pleasant story currently in circulation. You might recall a scandal breaking in 2019 (doesn’t that seem like a long time ago now?), in which it was revealed that Apple was hiring people to listen to recordings obtained by Siri. It quickly transpired that many of these recordings had been acquired without the explicit knowledge or consent of users, and included accidentally-recorded discussions on sensitive topics, and even some clips of people engaged in romantic interludes. Apple quickly owned up to the problem, and promised that they would fix the issue and change their behavior.

Most people accepted the apology and moved on. Unfortunately, it now seems that Apple hasn’t changed its behavior at all. They paid lip service to the idea of doing so, but then just carried on doing exactly what they were doing previously. Thomas le Bonniec, who was once employed by Apple to listen to recordings like these, has now made a formal complaint to data protection regulators in various countries stating that Apple is deliberately and illegally scraping and storing private data about its customers from recorded conversations. It’s important to note that Apple will have the opportunity to defend itself if these allegations ever result in a formal investigation, but Apple’s own past statements seem to confirm that the company intended to continue monitoring Siri recordings after the release of iOS 13.2.

Anybody who has concerns about what Apple may or may not be listening to has the ability to stop any such recordings reaching the company in the first place. You’ll find the option to turn off Siri recording storage under your ‘Settings’ menu, where it’s under ‘Privacy,’ ‘Analytics & Improvement,’ and then ‘Improve Siri & Dictation.’ Once that’s done, head back into ‘Settings,’ look for ‘Siri & Search,’ open ‘Siri History,’ and press the delete option. The depth at which the settings are buried within menus could be taken as an indication of how keen Apple is to obtain the information in the first place.

These two news items leaking at the same time threaten to cast a cloud over the launch of the new iPhone. The headphones issue is annoying. The eavesdropping issue, if correct, is very worrying indeed. Releasing a new iPhone used to be a license to print money for Apple. Now, it’s probably fairer to call it a game of online sports. It’s a fair comparison to make – the company has its Apple Arcade now, and so it knows a thing or two about the online gaming business. People enjoy spending money at roseslots, but they don’t necessarily feel compelled to. They’ll only spend so long as they’re happy with both the rewards and the risks. If they feel like they’re backing a loser, they’ll log off the sporting website and go and spend their money somewhere else.

Apple still has a lot of goodwill. It’s the world’s favorite technology company, and there’s a global audience of millions of people who love their products and are willing to queue overnight to be among the first to get hold of them. Even so, Apple shouldn’t make the mistake of taking that audience for granted. If they keep giving them reasons to look elsewhere, they will eventually do so. In this instance, we’re not asking for a lot. Give us a way of listening to music when we spend hundreds of dollars buying a phone from you, and please don’t listen to our private conversations when we haven’t given you permission to. Is that too much to ask?

As iPhone users, we like to tell ourselves that we’re using the safest possible platform for handling our personal information. We’ve been told many times that the encryption and security properties of an iPhone are so secure that even the FBI can’t break into them when they’re trying to investigate a crime. The overwhelming majority of us would never have any reason to worry about the security services attempting to gain access to our devices anyway, but it’s nice to know that our data is in safe hands – or is it?

Is The iPhone’s Email App Compromised?

During the past few days, there have been allegations all over the press that the iPhone’s standard email app is wide open to hackers, and may even have been exploited already. Apple has been quick to go on the defensive, and have issued a statement saying that there’s no evidence that the newly-identified flaw has been exploited, but that hasn’t assuaged everyone’s concerns. Could it be that there’s been a gaping hole in the security protocols of the email app for a long time? If so, how likely is it that someone has been able to gain access to your phone and intercept your emails?

Before we go any further, we should note that it’s impossible to create a system that’s totally safe against hackers. Hackers will always exist, and they’ll always be in a constant process of trying to gain access to secure systems. To hackers, it’s like playing a highbrow version of online games. Just as a player has to spin the reels multiple times if they want to win money, a hacker will repeatedly attempt to crack a system until they eventually gain entry. The only real difference is that for a roseslots player, the jackpot is an instant cash payout. For a hacker, the jackpot is access to information that could eventually turn out to be far more valuable. Both games are risky, but only one of them is malicious. Apple users will be hoping that on this occasion, the house has won, and their information is safe.

While the amount of danger posed to users by the flaw is debated, the existence of the flaw isn’t. A mobile security firm called ZecOps published their own research on the matter last week, and say that the bug may potentially affect millions of people. In a rejection of Apple’s official stance on the matter, ZecOps say that they’re very confident that the issue has been used by hackers to gain access to the personal information of at least six high profile individuals. The average iPhone user won’t be of interest to hackers, but if it’s possible to gain access to the emails of one person, it’s possible to gain access to the emails of anybody. Perhaps more worryingly, at the time of writing, Apple has not yet patched the flaw. They’re working on a fix, and they hope to push the fix out to phones in the very near future, but right now, the vulnerability still exists and can, therefore, still be exploited.

ZecOps and Apple – Everything You Need to Know

News of the vulnerability has only recently reached the press, but Apple has known of it for at least a month. ZecOps approached Apple directly to report their findings, and only went to the press a month later when they felt that their concerns weren’t being listened to or addressed. Unlike some high-profile iPhone vulnerabilities of the past, this flaw doesn’t only apply to older versions of iOS. Even if your devices have updated to the latest version, the research company says that the potential for your device to be compromised still exists.

The hacking attack starts with sending you a seemingly blank email. Upon opening the email, the iPad or iPhone would crash, and hackers would then gain access to your device while it was rebooting to recover from the crash. Unlike the majority of the hacking methods, there is no action required on the user’s behalf to become vulnerable. They don’t have to download a specific file or visit a specific website. As soon as the email is opened – which can be done with just a single push of a button – the attack begins, and at that point, nothing can be done to prevent it.

According to ZecOps, the attack has so far been used successfully against the owner of one of America’s fortune 500 companies, a high-ranking employee of one of Japan’s largest mobile networks, several senior tech executives across the Middle East, and two European journalists. Apple has rejected this aspect of the claim, insisting that the company has performed its own investigation and analysis and hasn’t been able to identify any evidence that any attacks have happened. They also insist that although there is a vulnerability, it doesn’t put any of their customers at risk.

They acknowledge three specific flaws in the Mail app, but say that other security provisions on iPhones and iPads prevent the flaws from being used to gain access to data.At the moment, there’s no way of knowing who’s right and who’s wrong. ZecOps say that they have further evidence to prove that attacks happened, but they won’t release the information until Apple has released a patch, because releasing the information may make it easier for attacks to be carried out. Apple certainly won’t want to worry its higher-value customers by admitting that their personal information might be at risk, but it would be a public relations disaster to deny that any attacks have happened and then be forced to concede that they have indeed happened at a later date. Someone in this situation is right, and someone is wrong – and ZecOps have far less to lose if they’re proven to be wrong.

Final Thoughts

This article isn’t a suggestion that everybody should abandon their Apple devices and turn to Android. Android devices have been shown to have multiple vulnerabilities of their own in the past, and it’s thought that Android systems are targeted more frequently than Apple systems. It is, however, a reminder that nothing online is ever one hundred percent safe no matter how much we like to tell ourselves it is.