iOS Internals · iPhone Privacy Controls · Lesson 4 of 5

App Privacy Report & Indicators

Catch apps in the act with the dots and App Privacy Report, then guard your inbox.

Dots, and a 7-day diary

Permissions and labels tell you what an app may do. These tools show you what it actually did.

Since iOS 14, your iPhone shows a recording indicator at the top of the screen whenever an app uses the microphone or camera. An orange dot means the microphone. A green dot means the camera, or the camera and microphone together. If you've turned on Differentiate Without Color in accessibility settings, the orange dot appears as a square. To see which app it was, open Control Center. A note at the top names any app that has recently used the microphone or camera.

A dot during a call or a video is normal. A dot while you're reading a news app is a reason to look closer.

For a longer view, turn on App Privacy Report, added in iOS 15.2. Go to Settings, Privacy & Security, scroll down, tap App Privacy Report, then Turn On App Privacy Report. It only starts recording from that moment, so it fills in as you use your phone. It covers the past 7 days:

• Data & Sensor Access shows how often and when each app touched things like Location, Photos, Camera, Microphone and Contacts.
• App Network Activity lists the web domains (website names, like ads.example.com) each app contacted.
• Website Network Activity covers domains contacted by websites you opened inside apps.
• Most Contacted Domains ranks the domains all your apps reach most often.

The report is encrypted and stored only on your phone. Turning it off also deletes its data. One gap: private browsing sessions in browser apps aren't included.

This is how you compare a label with reality. If an app says it doesn't track you but keeps contacting ad domains, or reads your location at 3 a.m., change its permissions or delete it.

Guarding your inbox

Email has its own tracking trick. Many marketing emails contain a tracking pixel, a tiny invisible image. When your mail app loads it, the sender's server learns that you opened the message, when you did, and your IP address, the internet address of your connection, which can hint at your location.

Mail Privacy Protection, added in iOS 15, blocks that. It hides your IP address from senders and stops them from seeing whether you opened their message. Turn it on in Settings, Apps, Mail, Privacy Protection, then Protect Mail Activity (on versions before iOS 18, Mail sits directly in Settings). Apple notes two limits. It doesn't cover links you tap or attachments like PDFs, and it needs Limit IP Address Tracking turned on for your network.

The other half of inbox privacy is not handing out your real address at all. Hide My Email, part of the paid iCloud+ plan, creates unique, random email addresses that forward to your real inbox. Use one when you sign up for a newsletter, a store or a contest. Replies you send from it keep your real address hidden too.

Each address works for one purpose, so it also tells you something. If spam arrives at the address you only gave to a pizza place, you know where the leak came from. You can then deactivate that one address, and it stops forwarding mail to you. Everything else keeps working.

Manage your addresses in Settings, tap your name, iCloud, then Hide My Email. From there you can create new ones, deactivate old ones and choose which of your real addresses they forward to. You can also create them right inside Safari and Mail, wherever an email address is needed.