Apple's iOS 14 beta shows apps like TikTok still spy on your iPhone clipboard

The privacy breach was first reported in March.
 By 
Sasha Lekach
 on 
Apple's iOS 14 beta shows apps like TikTok still spy on your iPhone clipboard
So many iPhone apps are checking out your clipboard. Credit: Jaap Arriens / NurPhoto via Getty Images

A copy-paste issue on iPhones is still running wild on more than 50 apps, including TikTok, numerous news apps, and games like Bejeweled.

The clipboard privacy breach was first reported back in March and exposed that some apps could see iPhone users' clipboard contents, whether it be a credit card number, password, or random link. The apps were accessing the copied text or media every time users opened them without users knowing that was happening.

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2020, the newest iPhone operating system, iOS 14, was introduced and with it a new way to notify users about apps looking at your iPhone data. Other types of app data access will be self-reported in what Apple is calling privacy "nutrition labels."


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Beta users immediately noticed that the clipboard spying is still happening on all those apps, thanks to a new privacy feature that lets users see it. Here's a video showing how the new iOS alerts users to what's happening behind the scenes:

The iOS 14 public beta is coming in July and the official release will be here in the fall. Soon we'll see how much apps are snooping on our clipboards. Mashable reached out to Apple for more information on why this still appears to be happening and we'll update this story if/when we hear back.

UPDATE: June 28, 2020, 9:21 p.m. UTC One of the researchers who discovered the privacy vulnerability has been in touch with Apple about the issue. He said that had Apple contacted him and his partner to let the team know that their discovery led to the clipboard notification feature in the upcoming iOS.

He said they had reached out to Apple in January before publishing a post about the privacy breach in March.

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Sasha Lekach

Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.

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