13 October
What happened on this date in privacy, anonymity networks and censorship. Every year on the same date we add a new look back and keep the earlier ones as they were.
2026
Safari fraudulent website warning and Tencent Safe Browsing
On your iPhone, Safari's Fraudulent Website Warning may send information calculated from the website address to Google and Apple for comparison, and Apple's Safari & Privacy page reads that Tencent Safe Browsing may also be used when the region is set to mainland China or Hong Kong. A cryptography researcher wrote in a blog post on 13 October 2019 that Safari on iOS 13 appeared to share part of users' browsing history with Tencent, and that the feature appeared to be on by default. According to Apple's statement as quoted by MacRumors and other outlets on 14 October 2019, only devices with the region set to mainland China obtain the list of malicious sites from Tencent, and the actual URLs are not shared with the provider. The Apple page quoted by Daring Fireball at the time reads that providers may log your IP address, and the page as checked on 10 October 2026 still reads that Google and Tencent may do so, with Hong Kong now listed alongside mainland China for Tencent. The page lists Tencent only for the mainland China and Hong Kong region settings, and readers with either setting can turn the warning off under Settings > Apps > Safari, at the cost of one less prompt when opening phishing sites.
Also on this day
- Netscape announced a free beta of its browser on the internet, and the press release reads that the final version due in November would offer security features such as encryption and server authentication. Source: Netscape Communications