TECHNOLOGY
UK's iCloud Encryption Freeze Leaves Some Users With Stronger Protection Than Others
A quirk in how Apple withdrew its strongest iCloud encryption from new UK users means two people with identical devices can end up with very different levels of data protection. Existing users kept it, newcomers can't get it.
Image: IntraGoals Media · Uploaded by IntraGoals — usage rights confirmed
Alice and Bill live in the UK. They own identical iPhones, subscribe to the same iCloud services, and use their devices in near-identical ways. Yet only one of them benefits from Apple's strongest available protection for iCloud data.
Alice switched on Advanced Data Protection, Apple's optional end-to-end encryption feature, before it was withdrawn for new UK users in February 2025. Bill did not get to it in time. Now he cannot turn it on at all, even though he uses the same phone, the same operating system and the same Apple services as Alice.
The discrepancy traces back to a dispute between Apple and the UK government over encrypted data. Apple pulled Advanced Data Protection from new UK sign-ups earlier this year rather than comply with reported demands for access to encrypted user data, while allowing existing users who had already enabled the feature to keep it. The result is a two-tier system in which identical hardware and identical accounts can carry very different privacy guarantees, depending solely on timing.
The roots of Apple's stance on encryption go back more than a decade, to the aftermath of Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's PRISM surveillance program. In a January 2014 interview with ABC News' David Muir, Tim Cook addressed government pressure on tech companies directly. "We have a gag order on us right now," Cook said at the time, before adding: "There is no back door. The government doesn't have access to our servers. They would have to cart us out in a box for that... we feel that strongly about it."
That position has shaped Apple's approach to encryption ever since, including its recent standoff with UK authorities. The specifics of the government's demands, and the full legal basis for them, have not been officially detailed by Apple or confirmed independently. Some reporting on the matter has relied on sources that could not be fully verified, and key details — including exact dates, figures and the precise scope of any government request — remain unconfirmed.
What is clear is the practical effect for ordinary users: two people with the same phone, the same apps and the same subscription can now have meaningfully different levels of protection for their personal data, based entirely on when they happened to flip a switch.