Back at WWDC, Apple announced that it would require all of its third-party developers to enable a feature called App Transport Security (ATS) within their apps by January 1st, 2017.
The feature, introduced in iOS 9, is designed to boost the safety and security of iPhone and iPad users by forcing the apps they use to connect to the internet through a secure HTTPS connection rather than an unencrypted line.
The company has now pushed back that deadline to give developers more time to implement the feature. While ATS has been a part of iOS for more than a year-and-a-half, the majority of developers did not take advantage of its functionality; making things worse, Google released code in 2015 that allowed developers to bypass the feature and continue serving ads.
The company has yet to issue an update deadline, though promises an update soon.
“App Transport Security (ATS), introduced in iOS 9 and OS X v10.11, improves user security and privacy by requiring apps to use secure network connections over HTTPS. At WWDC 2016 we announced that apps submitted to the App Store will be required to support ATS at the end of the year,” says Apple in an update on its developer webpage.
“To give you additional time to prepare, this deadline has been extended and we will provide another update when a new deadline is confirmed.”
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