Here's How To Know If iPhone Apps Are Spying On You

A feature available only to iPhones and iPads running the most recent versions of Apple's operating systems can show users which applications are accessing their private data — and to what extent.

Tucked away in the Settings menu of devices with iOS/iPadOS 15.2 or beyond such as the recently released iPhone 14 series, App Privacy Report can give users "visibility into the ways app use the privacy permissions you've granted them," Apple said on its website.

The feature shows details about how often apps access their users' data, such as location, camera and microphone, among others, when enabled.

"If an app appears to be accessing your data in a way or at a time that you didn't expect, you can update your privacy settings or revoke permission," Apple stated.

Some apps, for example, "use Contacts data in various ways on your device to provide features to you," the company explained.

"Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, Fitness, and Apple Books use your Me card from Contacts to display your profile photo in those apps," Apple said.

Other apps such as Camera and Photos use Contacts to identify people in photos for albums, Apple's Memories and other features that are personalized on users' devices, while Calendar uses it to display birthdays.

Contact names and photos are kept on users' devices and are not sent to Apple, the company said.

App Privacy Report, which only starts gathering information once enabled, also shows information about each app's network activity and website network activity as well as the web domains that all apps contact most frequently.

Its App Network Activity shows domains that have been contacted either directly or from content within an app in the past seven days.

The latter included things like tapping on an article in a social media app's news feed or playing a video that was embedded in an app.

App Privacy Report, through its Most Contacted Domains, lists the web domains most frequently contacted by all of a user's apps, either directly or from in-app web content, in the past week as well.

Meanwhile, the Website Network Activity tab shows users domains that have been contacted by websites they visited within apps in the same time period.

App Privacy Report does not include network activity from private browsing sessions in browser apps, but it does display network activity and websites visited in non-browser apps that provide private modes.

Users can find it by going to Settings and clicking on Privacy.

Users will need to actively turn on App Privacy Report for it to begin gathering information on how apps use their private data.