Apple just shipped a privacy feature that fundamentally changes what cell carriers can see. The company quietly rolled out a setting this week that lets iPhone and iPad users block their wireless provider from collecting precise location data - a move that could frustrate law enforcement requests and complicate the ongoing battle between tech giants and surveillance. The feature arrives as U.S. carriers are still reeling from the Salt Typhoon breach, where China-backed hackers spent months inside AT&T and Verizon's systems siphoning location data and call records.
Apple just made it significantly harder for anyone - cops, spies, or hackers - to track your iPhone through your cell carrier. The company rolled out a privacy feature this week that gives users control over how much location precision their device shares with wireless networks, marking a notable escalation in the tech giant's ongoing privacy battle.
The feature, buried in iOS 26.3 settings, lets users limit location data shared with carriers to approximate neighborhoods rather than pinpoint street addresses. It's available now on iPhone Air, iPhone 16e, and iPad Pro (M5) cellular models, though only for customers on a handful of networks including EE and BT in the UK, Telekom in Germany, AIS and True in Thailand, and Boost Mobile stateside.
Apple won't say why it built this now, and the company declined to comment on the record when reached by TechCrunch. But the timing tells its own story. Over the past year, U.S. carriers have been dealing with one of the most significant breaches in telecom history - the Salt Typhoon intrusion, where China-backed hackers burrowed into AT&T and Verizon's systems seeking .
