You Should Double Check Which Apps Can See Your Photos on IPhone
This happens too often. You install an interesting new application. The app will ask you to give it permission to access your photo library, and you will eventually give it full access. This is the most convenient option. Doing this for a proven and popular app like Instagram or Slack is normal and even beneficial. But not all apps are created equally.
In fact, researchers recently discovered malicious photo scanning apps on the App Store . Yes, malware has started making its way from Android to iPhone. Called SparkCat, it is a kind of malicious platform that runs in the background and performs OCR on all your photos in hopes of finding the credentials for your crypto account. But any app that has access to your entire photo library could theoretically access text inside photos, such as your credit card information or your IDs (though you should never store unprotected photos of important documents in your camera roll).
In light of this news, and to make sure that unnecessary or minor apps don’t gain access to all your photos, you should spend some time checking which apps have full access to photos and revoke apps that don’t really need it.
Deny access to photos for iPhone apps
Open the Settings app and go to the Privacy & Security section. Then select the Photos app and view all the apps that have access to its photos.
Here you will see the access level for each application. Select the app you want to revoke permissions for and switch to None or Restricted . When you select Restricted Sharing , you’ll be asked to select the photos you want to share rather than sharing your entire library. Repeat these steps for all the apps for which you want to change permissions, then click Finish .
If you’ve given an app limited access and try to access your photo library with it, your iPhone will ask you whether you want to keep your current selection or add more photos. You can select the Select More Photos option to add more recent photos to the mix.
You can also change app permissions to use photos at any time in Privacy & Security > Photos > App > Done .
And while you’re already in your privacy and security settings, it might be worth turning on the new private sharing feature, which will help you automatically remove location data when you upload or share photos in your app of choice.