Conspiracy theories are common on social media; in the field of technology, the biggest of recent years proposed that 5G will kill you (it won’t). But now Apple and iOS 14 have acquired a viral conspiracy theory of their own.
It all comes from a post on Facebook that’s been shared and copied thousands of times, and also shared on Twitter with thousands of likes and retweets. The post, reports 9to5Mac, claims that iOS 14’s new home screen widgets – specifically the Widgetsmith and Color Widgets apps – contain keyloggers that read everything you type and steal your passwords.
Based on all available evidence, these claims appear to have been plucked out of thin air, and there is no reason to believe they have any basis in reality whatsoever. Widgets do not have greater powers than any other iOS app to access data outside their sandboxes. No app on an unjailbroken iPhone can read what you’re typing in any other app.
It’s not even possible for third-party keyboards to steal your passwords, as iOS prevents them from being used in password-specific fields.
One of the “signs” of a keylogger described in the viral post is that the keyboard lags. It’s possible you’ve noticed something along these lines, but this is something beta testers have been complaining about since the first version of iOS 14 appeared back in June, long before any widgets from the two accused apps were installed.
This article originally appeared on Macworld Sweden. Translation by David Price.
