Users in Spain and Italy will have access to Apple’s Communications Security feature in the coming days. It is a tool that alerts children when they receive or send photos that contain nudity. These notices are turned off by default and only work if parents choose to turn them on for their children on child accounts on the Family Sharing plan. The feature went live last September in Germany, Australia, Canada, the United States, France, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
When a child receives a message containing a nude photo, the image is blurred and the child is warned, presented with helpful resources on this issue and reassured that it is okay not to access that photo. In the event that it is the minor who intends to send a nude photo, he will also receive a similar warning. Both for sending and receiving, the child is offered the possibility of sending a message to someone they trust to ask for help.
In Spain it will be available until the age of 18 and those under 14 will receive notices and instructions adapted to their age group
Age requirements for the Security in Communications feature vary from country to country due to different legislation. In the case of Spain, it will be available for accounts configured as children in iCloud families, under 18 years of age. When the user is under 14 years of age, the message and the instructions will be adapted to this age group, different from those of the elderly. The new feature will be available in an upcoming iOS 16 update that Apple will release in the coming days.
Apple ensures that it does not have access to the content of the messages and that the entire operation is carried out within the child’s own iPhone, without any communication with the outside. The iMessage app, which works with end-to-end cryptographic encryption, analyzes attached images and determines if a photo contains nudity. If any is detected, only the minor is notified, but no indication of this process is output outside the device. Parents also do not receive notifications.
Resources offered by Siri in the case of detection of attachments with nudity
Apple
As a complement, Apple has expanded guidance in its virtual assistant Siri, its Spotlight search and the Safari browser search engine to offer resources to parents and children on issues such as child exploitation, with information, for example, on where and how to file a report. of a case. Silvia Moroder, president of the ANAR foundation expressed her support for the new iOS feature for child protection: “We are pleased to see that Apple is going to enable the communication security function in Messages for Spain. This function provides resources to families who face difficult situations in real life and in the digital environment, and provides tools for children to make safer decisions”.
In the summer of 2021, Apple tried to launch this initiative and another to control the photos of child pornography that a user could upload to its iCloud platform. The project faced strong opposition from civil rights groups, who denounced eavesdropping on private email. The company assured that it was an automatic process based on a comparison of images sent by child protection groups. In full controversy, the company decided to take more time to articulate its proposal.
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