Third-party Keyboards May Have Full Access Due To Bugs: Apple

The latest update from Apple 13.1 just rolled out and it has fixed some major bugs that were present in the previous iOS 13.0 release. But now Apple has warned its customers about a recent bug in third-party keyboards.

Apple earlier stated that the third-party keyboards that are installed on iOS 13 and iPadOS may have the ability to grant “full access” even if the user hasn’t provided authorization. This essentially means that the keyboard would be able to send data to the internet, including whatever the user types on the keyboard.

To fix the bug, Apple plans on releasing the next software update iOS 13.2 and it has already entered the beta state.

A wide majority of iPhone users use a third-party keyboard like Google’s Gboard, Microsoft’s Swiftkey and Grammarly. Chances are if you use them, you have already granted permission to them as they request it and that’s okay. But if you had intentionally avoided granting full access, you might as well think of uninstalling the third-party app keyboards for better security.

Normally, Apple makes sure that the third-party developers cannot record your password by switching to the iOS keyboard by default whenever a confidential field pops-up. This happens even if a third-party keyboard like Gboard is installed and used for everything else.