ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Apple’s Impersonation Risk Detection.
- It can help spot social engineering scams in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27.
- You’ll need to enable it first.
What makes social engineering scams so effective is that they’re able to get around traditional security checkpoints and convince you to make a risky choice without realizing it. A feature in iOS 27 called Impersonation Risk Detection tries to better defend against that reality on iPhones and iPads — but it’s not on by default.
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The security feature, which debuted in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, warns you when it flags suspicious signals in a supported app. Its goal is to help you stop and double-check before making sensitive changes that could expose you to a scam, which something like two-factor authentication can’t protect you from to the same degree.
How Impersonation Risk Detection works
Let’s say you’re using an app on your iPhone or iPad that supports Impersonation Risk Detection. You’re about to perform a sensitive action, such as making a payment, changing your password, or sharing your account details. Impersonation Risk Detection steps in to analyze your Apple account and the information on your device to look for signs of a scam.
Based on the results, Apple will send one of the following three risk levels to the app:
- Unknown: This means that no suspicious activity was detected, but it doesn’t confirm that the action you’re about to take is safe.
- Medium: This indicates that some signs of suspicious activity were detected.
- High: This means that significant signs of suspicious activity were detected.
The app then decides what to do next. If a high level of suspicious activity is found, the app could ask you to verify your identify, show a warning, or delay your action before it gets you into trouble. The app makes this determination, not Apple.
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Apple will analyze certain information related to an interaction to generate the risk level, but it never receives the data itself. The company doesn’t analyze your content in such apps as Mail, Messages, and Photos. But Apple does learn the type of action you attempted when an app requests a risk assessment. Supported apps receive only the risk level and not the data used to create it.
Impersonation Risk Detection is turned off by default because a supported app requires a certain level of access to your actions and activities.
How to enable Impersonation Risk Detection
To enable the setting in iOS 27 or iPadOS 27, go to Settings and select Privacy & Security. Swipe toward the bottom of the screen and tap the setting for Impersonation Risk Detection. At the next screen, turn on the switch for “Share with App Developers.” After turning this setting on, you may have to wait 24 hours for it to take effect.
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Any apps that participate in Impersonation Risk Detection will appear on the same screen, so you can always check them periodically for recent activity. You’ll see which apps asked for a risk assessment and which actions triggered the request. Here, you can also turn off access for individual apps.
Both built-in and third-party apps can support the feature, though Apple didn’t list any specific programs on its support page. However, with social engineering scams so pervasive, hopefully enough apps will jump on this bandwagon to better prevent people from becoming victims.
