Top 3 iOS 15 privacy features you should be using

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Apple’s (AAPL) iOS 15, now available for the iPhone 6 and later versions of the iPhone, offers an array of improvements — including the ability to watch movies with distant friends via FaceTime and an improved Weather app.

But some of the biggest changes come in the form of privacy upgrades that limit the ability for advertisers, or anyone for that matter, to track you online. We’re talking about the ability to keep email senders from knowing if you’ve opened their messages, to keeping your online activity safe from potential hackers.

Since there are a bunch of privacy-related features in iOS 15, I’m breaking down the top three and how you can use them.

iCloud Private Relay protects your web traffic

Included in iOS 15 is a beta version of Apple’s pseudo-virtual private network called iCloud Private Relay. It’s not exactly the same as a virtual private network app like, say, Private Internet Access, which routes your Safari web traffic through third-party servers to protect your information, but the end result is similar.

Instead, iCloud Private Relay encrypts web traffic leaving your device, then routes your data requests through two separate relays, preventing anyone, including Apple itself, from seeing what you’re doing online.

Apple's iCloud Private Relay helps protect your web activity, but it only works with Safari. (Image: Apple)
Apple's iCloud Private Relay helps protect your web activity, but it only works with Safari. (Image: Apple) · Apple

The feature is perfect for situations when you need to jump on an open Wifi connection at, say, a coffee shop or even in your hotel room, where hackers can snoop on your web activity and steal your information.

To use iCloud Private Relay, you’ll need to have an iCloud+ account, which is the new name for a paid version of iCloud. I pay $0.99 per month for my iCloud+ account to get 50GB of online storage, and still get access to iCloud Private Relay, so you don’t have to worry about spending a ton of cash to use the option.

Once you’re signed up for iCloud+, or if you have an account already, you can open the Settings app and navigate to iCloud. From there, select the iCloud button, tap Private Relay (Beta), and turn the switch to the on position.

It’s important to keep in mind that the feature only works with Safari on your device. So if you’re a Chrome user, you won’t get any of the protections from iCloud Private Relay.

Mail Privacy Protection

You likely receive a number of marketing emails. But you may not know that when you receive emails, the sender often embeds a tracking pixel, an invisible piece of the message that allows marketers to see if you opened the message, when, and learn your IP address. The idea is that by better understanding your email reading habits, marketers can fire off messages that you’ll end up reading, including those that offer items for sale.