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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Information Leaks Using a Browser on iOS and iPadOS

January 20, 2022

If you are an Apple user and want to securely surf the internet on a mobile device, you’re pretty much screwed for now. Malwarebytes reported that your browsing activity and personal information can be exposed whenever you use a browser on an iOS or iPadOS device. It doesn’t matter what browser you use. Using the Safari browser on macOS will also leak information. Apparently, there is a problem with the IndexedDB API. These data leaks do not require any specific user action either. “A tab or window that runs in the background and continually queries the IndexedDB API for available databases can learn what other websites a user visits in real-time.”

Private browsing with Safari 15 only partially helps as the available information for leaking is reduced. For now, you should cease ALL internet browsing on iOS and iPadOS devices since the problem exists for all browsers. Supposedly, Apple has fixed the issue, but an update has yet to be released.

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