I Blame Apple in Part for My False Expectations: An Autoethnographic Study of Apple's Lockdown Mode in iOS

TL;DR

The paternalistic security approach by Apple's Lockdown Mode harmful, because without detailed knowledge about technical capabilities and boundaries, at-risk users may be lulled into a false sense of security.

Abstract

Lockdown Mode was introduced in 2022 as a hardening setting for Apple's operating systems, designed to strengthen the protection against ``some of the most sophisticated digital threats''. However, Apple never explained these threats further. We present the first academic exploration of Lockdown Mode based on a 3-month autoethnographic study. We obtained a nuanced understanding of user experience and identified issues that can be extrapolated to larger user groups. The lack of information from Apple about the underlying threat model and details on affected features may hinder adequate assessment of Lockdown Mode, making informed decisions on its use challenging. Besides encountering undocumented restrictions, we also experienced both too much and too little visibility of protection during Lockdown Mode use. Finally, we deem the paternalistic security approach by Apple's Lockdown Mode harmful, because without detailed knowledge about technical capabilities and boundaries, at-risk users may be lulled into a false sense of security.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Screenshots of activating Lockdown Mode in iOS 16, including displayed information (left, centre) and activation prompt (right).
• Figure 2: Road map of the different study phases and the associated actions; months on the timeline correspond to the year 2023.
• Figure 3: Example of journaling script in action.
• Figure 4: Screenshots of encountered functionality breaking issues when using Lockdown Mode.
• Figure 5: Screenshots of occurred notifications and warnings while using Lockdown Mode in chronological order.