When iOS 17 arrives this fall, it should convey a slew of options that make our iPhones higher, together with Contact Posters, Standby, and Reside Voicemail. However there’s one you may not discover that can make your iPhone safer: a brand new developer requirement that seeks to chop down on apps that use APIs to trace customers by “fingerprinting” them.

As noticed by 9to5Mac, iOS 17 introduces a set of “required purpose” APIs that must be outlined earlier than an app will probably be accredited for distribution within the App Retailer. Apple says these APIs “have the potential of being misused to entry system alerts to attempt to establish the system or person, also referred to as fingerprinting.” Builders utilizing one of many 5 required purpose APIs–energetic keyboard, disk house, file timestamp, system boot time, and person defaults–should declare a number of accredited causes for utilizing every of the APIs and the info they acquire.

For instance, an app utilizing the file timestamp API should declare why the app must show file timestamps to the individual utilizing the system, entry the timestamps of information contained in the app container, or entry the timestamps of information or directories that the person particularly granted entry to. If these causes aren’t met, the developer will be unable to make use of the API of their app.

For builders that legitimately use these APIs, the additional steps must be fast. Nonetheless, the rule change might result in submission rejections for apps that improperly use APIs to gather person knowledge. Apple says the brand new laws will go into impact in fall 2023.