In early December 2022, Apple announced a significant change to iCloud data encryption. Previously, Apple split the way it protected your data synced via iCloud:
• Some of your data (photos and other media, reminders, and notes) relied on encryption keys held by Apple to protect your data when at rest–that is, while stored on its servers. You could access all of this via iCloud.com by logging in. When Apple syncs this data, it relies on encrypted HTTPS and similar secured connections between your devices and apps and its servers.
• Other parts of your data, an increasing amount over the year, relied on end-to-end encryption (E2EE), in which the keys for encrypting and decrypting your data are only stored on your devices and only accessible by your action on those devices. Apple has no access to the keys at all. Those kinds of data include Health information, Safari bookmarks, and iCloud Keychain. None of this data could be accessed at ; iCloud was just a conduit for syncing among devices. (Apple also encrypts this data in transit, but that’s a
