This is exactly the kind of tracking that VPN users seek to prevent and the idea that Big Sur purposefully bypasses the ability to prevent tracking raises serious concerns. With this data sitting around on Apple's servers, it could potentially be accessed by the company or even the government using a warrant.

This is concerning because it theoretically creates a data trail that could be leveraged to figure out what programs were used, when, and where. This results in Apple being able to harvest information from Mac users when they use certain Apple apps. The problem revolves around Apple's decision to bypass user-defined firewall rules in Big Sur. Unfortunately, changes rolled out in Big Sur can allow this kind of tracking to occur under certain circumstances – leading to concerns over the use of VPNs on Big Sur. The ability for consumers to conceal their location from online services (including Apple's own apps) is important to huge numbers of people who value privacy.įor a VPN to be able to provide this privacy, it is vital that identifiable user data cannot be harvested outside of the VPN tunnel at any stage during networking. MacOS is generally thought to be a platform that is better for consumer data privacy and security, so it seems counterproductive that Apple's updated Operating System is sending back invasive telemetry in such a way that it potentially affects VPN users.

Keepass macos big sur