You Won't Guess What's New with Apple (not Clickbait)

Well, what do we have here? It is another recent update that Apple rolled out that comes across as a little sketchy, but to me, it does. I am not an Apple user; I prefer Android. I've been using it since the whole war between Android and Apple started, and I don't plan on switching any time soon. But this isn't about me. It's about this update that Apple rolled out.

The IOS 17 update brought a lot of features to the iPhones, which are tweaks like being able to add in 3D augmented reality effects in pictures using your hands or the "catch-up and swipe to reply," which allows you to go back up to the first message that you didn't see, to a brand new way to share and view locations... Yeah, speaking of sharing, this segways me to the point of this short blog post. A new addition to Airdrop is here! That is a new way of making air drop much easier by simply holding your phone near someone else's iPhone to use "NameDrop," so you can now exchange phone numbers or email addresses.

Now, I know the Apple users will say it's not new because it was updated and was released on September 18, 2023, for IOS 17, so it's been around for a little bit, and you can see where the clouds start to darken in the distance. They have the feature auto defaulted to on, but you can turn it off if you like. 

Initially, the idea seems cool as a way to make sharing contacts, pictures, emails, etc easier, but how are they going to combat when the wrong person finds the right way of tweaking that feature to share things with people maliciously? Even worse, not knowing what happened or where it happened? I'll tell you that going to school for technology has soured a lot of things for me over the past few years. I'm going to be 100% honest here. I would not have considered that a possibility, but with a history of cyber security, I know that it's only a matter of time before it becomes a thing. 

Social engineering for some individuals will become effortless to achieve this feat quickly before I move further. Social engineering is the act of an attacker lowering an individual's defenses by portraying them as someone they aren't to gather information or gain access to something. Back to this, you can probably see that dark cloud I was talking about getting closer behind me. There are so many angles that can be taken to get someone to accept the share and not know who is behind it, and by it being a phone, it could be easier to get away with. The main reason is that you can't dive into the happenings like a computer could.

I want to clarify here: I do not want to be the person to cause fear in things, but I do like to highlight something that I find concerning, and this is one of those things. Again, I'm not an Apple user, but my girlfriend and most of her family are, so I'm thinking about them regarding this topic. I'm sure Apple has thought of those dark loose ends when it comes to wanting to keep clientele's information safe or, better yet, wanting their clientele to feel a sense of safety.

Here is a link to the IOS 17 if you haven't seen it yet:

Here are a few videos already acknowledging my concerns:

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