One such advanced security feature that Apple has come up with is its renowned face ID. But is it really as secure as Apple claims it to be? 

Your Face ID is Vulnerable Unless You Change This Setting 

Initially, Apple’s Face ID utilizes its TrueDepth camera, capturing facial data with incredible accuracy by projecting and analyzing thousands of invisible dots. It creates a map of all your creases and wrinkles and saves that information as a code to unlock your phone. 

Additionally, Face ID automatically adjusts to the development (if any) that may have gone through the look, like when you wear makeup or grow facial hair. Face ID uses your passcode to verify your identity when there has been a more significant change to your look, such as removing your beard, before updating your face data. 

Hats, scarves, glasses, contact lenses, face masks, sunglasses, and other headwear are all compatible with Face ID. According to Apple, the odds of someone else's face unlocking your iPhone are one in a million. 

What About Your Face? 

One of the common and obvious concerns is: what if someone unlocks your phone by holding it up to your face, while you are asleep? Well, the good news is that these systems usually never work when you have your eyes closed. 

The bad news? This security feature on your phone can well be disregarded. But, to prevent this from happening, there is something that can be done as discussed below: 

Smartphones are equipped with specific security features for users with hearing, visual, or mobility impairments. You can either use your phone to dictate what appears on the screen or enlarge the words on it. If you have trouble touching the screen or pushing the buttons on your iPhone, features like 'AssistiveTouch' would make it easier for you to utilize it. 

These are some vital tools that assist them to their aid, for users who need them. Yet, there is a setting that can compromise your security. 

Face ID also offers an accessibility feature to help those who are blind or have vision impairment. With the help of this setting, you may unlock your phone without having to open your eyes. While some users may need this, one should avoid using the feature if their feature is not impaired. Here is where to find it: 

• Go to Settings > Accessibility > Face ID & Attention. 
• Make sure Require Attention for Face ID is enabled. 

Although this setting is enabled by default, someone who has access to your phone could lock it while you are asleep and then turn it back on. Thus, to avoid the frightening consequences that may ensue, a brief check and constant monitoring here is more than worthwhile.  

While mobile advertisements would no longer be able to target iOS users via their personal IDs, who certainly did not consent to be tracked, there are numerous different alternative ways at their disposal - such as contextual signals and probabilistic attribution – to aid in targeting quality potential customers across the mobile ecosystem. 

Given that the Identifier for Advertisers has been deprecated, in-app advertising may appear to be less effective (IDFA). However, with adequate data, tactics, and partners, it is not only still a feasible growth strategy but also a crucial one. 

Changes Made After iOS 14.5 

Under the new privacy restrictions introduced by Apple, app advertisers can no longer rely on the IDFA to provide them with device-level user data in order to pursue iOS device users with relevant advertisements. 

Since advertisers can no longer track users’ activities across apps on iOS, such as clicks, downloads, and conversions, advertisers are less able to measure the efficacy of their ads and use that data to manage their campaigns and ad budgets. 

Performance Marketing is Different, Not Worse 

With iOS 14.5, while advertisers would not be able to access device ID data, they can still utilize contextual signals in order to show ads to a quality audience. 

Contextual signals are the privacy-induced data points that transmit significant information regarding an ad opportunity, such as location device type, and information about the environment in which an ad is shown (i.e. characteristics of an app or website). 

With this kind of data, advertisers may use contextual targeting to precisely estimate the possibility that a user would interact with an advertisement by matching an ad to an impression opportunity. They can then decide how much to bid for each impression. 

Since users are automatically opted out of IDFA tracking, advertisers will no longer be able to access device IDs in order to access data on how a user interacts with the ad, nor target audience one-on-one based on their in-app activities. Instead, machine learning models are utilizing new contextual signals to effectively predict user response. 

New Data, New Competitive Landscape 

Contextual data can further be combined with other metrics. For Example, the number of interactions with a certain ad element reveals which aspect of the creative is most effective. Of course, this is not as accurate as using the IDFA, but thanks to advancements in machine learning (ML) technology, it is now able to absorb these signals and forecast the value of each ad impression in real-time with a level of accuracy that is almost on par with device ID-powered advertising. 

Moreover, the competitive landscape of mobile advertising is more level than it has ever been. In recent times, all tech giants (such as Facebook and Google) have limited information about their users than before. This has eventually compressed the space, and niche players with specialized historical ML models and more active algorithms compete with the tech giants. 

For the given reason, the marketing platforms that continue to make investments in enhancing the effectiveness of their models by including more predictive signals have experienced the most success in the wake of the deprecation of the IDFA. 

Through more effective bidding, lower CPIs, improved user quality, and eventually higher ROAS for their advertisers, it will be possible to continuously train models to boost their prediction accuracy.  

The feud began when earlier this week, Musk, in a series of tweets accused Apple of halting most of the advertisements and threatening to remove the platform from its App Store. He added that this situation had become “a battle for the future of civilization.” 

However, Apple’s chief executive tweeted on Wednesday that “Tim was clear that Apple never consider doing so.” While he did not say whether Apple’s advertising was discussed in the meeting. 

The meeting between the two CEOs as numerous companies have halted spending on advertisements on Twitter, due to concerns over Elon Musk’s content moderation plan. 

This would apparently be a major setback for Twitter since Twitter relies on advertisements for the majority of its aggregate revenue. 

On Monday, the Twitter CEO accused apple of “censorship,” while also criticizing its policies, particularly the levies it imposes on purchases made through its App Store. “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?” said Musk. 

Later, Musk updated his Twitter followers that he was meeting with Mr. Cook at Apple’s headquarters, adding in his tweet: “Good conversation. Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store. Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.” Meanwhile, Apple has not made any official comment on the said meeting. 

Weeks after Mr. Musk became the chief executive, Twitter lost at least half of its major advertisers. This estimates a loss of nearly $750 million to the social media giant, as reported by Media Matters, a non-profit watchdog. 

Some of the major advertisers lost included General Mills and Pfizer. Musk as well acknowledged that this defection has resulted in a “massive drop” in revenue, with the company losing $4 million per day. 

Apple, on the other hand, is consistently one of the major advertisers on the social network company, spending over $100 million annually, as reported by Bloomberg.  

Fast Company's Apple News website currently displays a statement from the business confirming that it was hacked on Sunday afternoon, followed by another intrusion on Tuesday night that let threat actors to send bigoted notifications to smartphones via Apple News.

In a press release issued last night, the company claimed that "the statements are repulsive and are not by the contents and culture of Fast Company.  We have suspended FastCompany.com while we look into the matter and will not reopen it until it is resolved."

As soon as individuals on Twitter noticed the offensive Apple News notifications, the company disabled the Fast Company channel on the news network.

Data breach tactics

The website's webpage started to load up with articles headlined "Hacked by Vinny  Troia. [redacted] tongue my [redacted]. Thrax was here. " on Sunday afternoon, which was the first indication that Fast Company had been compromised.

In their ongoing dispute with security analyst Vinny Troia, members of the breached hacking group and the now-defunct RaidForums regularly deface websites and carry out attacks that they attribute to the researcher. Fast Company took the website offline for a while to address the defacement, but on Tuesday at around 8 PM EST, another attack occurred.

Hackers claim that after discovering that Fast Company was using WordPress for their website, they were able to compromise the company. The HTTP basic authentication which was supposed to have protected this WordPress installation was disregarded. The threat actor goes on to claim that they were able to enter the WordPress content management system by utilizing a relatively simple default password used on dozens of users.

Fast Company, according to the post, had a 'ridiculously easy' default password that was used on numerous accounts, including an admin account. The compromised account would have then been utilized by the threat actors to gain access to, among other things, authentication tokens and Apple News API credentials.

They assert that by using these tokens, they were able to set up administrator accounts on the CMS platforms, which were then used to send notifications to Apple News.