Non-profit privacy advocates Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Thursday launched an “Encrypt It Already” campaign that urges tech companies including Apple, Google, Meta, and others to implement or increase end-to-end encryption on their platforms.
Apple already provides end-to-end encryption for several data categories, as well as additional protection in the form of the optional Advanced Data Protection feature.
When a user turns on Advanced Data Protection, their trusted devices retain sole access to the encryption keys for the majority of their iCloud data, protecting it with end-to-end encryption. If users enable Advanced Data Protection, the total number of data categories protected using end-to-end encryption rises from 14 to 23 and includes iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes, and more.
However, the EFF wants Apple to take encrypted protection further. Lat year, the EFF urged Apple and Google to implement end-to-end encryption for RCS messaging. While Apple announced that it was working to add that encrytion to RCS messaging, it did not announce a specific timeframe.
iMessage already supports end-to-end encryption by default, and has done so since 2011.
The EFF is also urging Apple and Google to allow users to set per-app AI permissions, allowing them to turn off Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini in certain apps.
The EFF also wants tech companies to better communicate new implementations of end-to-end encryption, encouraging them to publish blog posts and technical papers providing information about new end-to-end encryption implementations, and to provide detailed user documentation.
As for users, the EFF is encouraging them to enable any available end-to-end encryption features in the apps they use. Apple users are encouraged to use Apple’s feedback form to push the company to provide additional end-to-end encryption support.
