iOS 14.5 beta directs Safari ‘safe browsing’ traffic through Apple server instead of Google to protect personal user data

Sami Fathi, MacRumors:

Starting with iOS and iPadOS 14.5, Apple will proxy Google’s “Safe Browsing” service used in Safari through its own servers instead of relying on Google as a way to limit which personal data Google sees about users.

And:

Apple relies on Google’s “Safe Browsing,” a database/blocklist of websites crawled by Google of websites that it deems to be suspected phishing or scam.

And:

While Google doesn’t know which specific URL you’re trying to visit, it may collect your IP address during its interaction with Safari. Now on iOS/iPadOS 14.5, that’s no longer the case. As confirmed by the Head of Engineering for WebKit, Apple will now proxy Google’s Safe Browsing feature through its own servers instead of Google as a way to “limit the risk of information leak.”

Good move.