Do you need to stop using this app on your iPhone?
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Updated on Dec. 9 with Google’s new Chrome AI warning for all users.
Apple warns iPhone users to stop using Google Chrome. “Unlike Chrome,” it says, “Safari truly helps protect your privacy.” Apple’s warning now includes secretive fingerprinting. And Chrome’s not the only Google app you need to stop using.
Apple says “Safari works to prevent advertisers and websites from using the unique combination of characteristics of your device to create a ‘fingerprint’ to track you. To combat fingerprinting, Safari presents a simplified version of the system configuration so more devices look identical to trackers, making it harder to single yours out.”
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Digital fingerprinting has made an alarming comeback this year, with Google reversing its ban on this secretive, obfuscated technology that cannot be disabled. Given tracking cookies offer opt-outs, it’s bad news for users that fingerprinting do not.
Fingerprinting takes a raft of unrelated data points from your phone and combines these into a trackable identity. Apple isn’t alone in introducing new technology to block this by falsifying those signals. Mozilla has updated Firefox in a similar way. You can check whether your device can be fingerprinted or is masking your identity here.
Apple says Safari also offers AI-based tracking prevention, genuinely private browsing and defenses against location harvesting. It says Chrome fails to protect users on all those counts. Somewhat cutely, Apple adds that “Safari works seamlessly with Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides.”
But Apple’s tight-knit Google integration may still catch you out — even if you use Safari. When you search the web in Safari, you’re probably using Google as the default search engine. At the bottom of each page, Google now includes a highlighted link to its own Google App, with a one-click redirect that is all-too-easy to tap accidentally.
Be warned, the data harvested by the Google App and linked to your identity is worse than Chrome. Apple’s warning applies just the same — using the Google App carries the same privacy risks per Apple’s warning, If you want to follow Apple’s advice and browse privately, do not tap the blue “Try app” button to leave Safari.
Chrome continues to dominate the browser market. It is quite clear that more than 3 billion users are comfortable with tracking given frequent warnings. If you decide to use Chrome knowing all this, that’s a transparent choice to make. If you choose to use the Google App on your iPhone instead, just be aware of its data harvesting before you do.
App privacy
Apple iOS / @UKZak
Beyond privacy, tracking and fingerprinting, there’s another Chrome warning now making headlines — its increasing integration with Google’s Gemini AI. Gartner warns that “AI browsers, have the potential to transform how users interact with websites and automate transactions while introducing critical cybersecurity risks. CISOs must block all AI browsers in the foreseeable future to minimize risk exposure.”
Google has responded. “The primary new threat facing all agentic browsers is indirect prompt injection. It can appear in malicious sites, third-party content in iframes, or from user-generated content like user reviews, and can cause the agent to take unwanted actions such as initiating financial transactions or exfiltrating sensitive data.”
Google’s answer is a “layered defense that includes both deterministic and probabilistic defenses to make it difficult and costly for attackers to cause harm.” But the reality is that we’re at the very earliest stages of stitching AI into web-facing browsers and the productivity suites we all rely on at home and at work.
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Meanwhile, as The Register neatly summarizes, “Google plans to add a second Gemini-based model to Chrome to address the security problems created by adding the first Gemini model to Chrome.” This may give Apple users pause for thought, as to what permissions they may find themselves granting to Google’s AI as and when’ it’s fully up and running in the Chrome browser running on their iPhones.
Surfshark and others have warned that the data harvesting and tracking situation gets gravely worse with AI browsers and add-ons. All of which plays into Apple’s warning shot, that when it comes to web browsing on Apple devices, Apple’s browser is best.