I am wondering if there is a way to block network access to a specific application or set of applications in IOS 8.
Specifically, I'd like the same ability to turn off wifi data access that I have to turn off wireless data access.
I know a solution is available if I jailbreak my phone. Just wondering if there's an Apple approved way?
iOS 8.1
@testalpha
This app you mention (WiFi Blocker) is not a solution at all for the issue we are talking about here... It is to control the usage of your WIFI access point at home by the various devices connected to it.
On the other hand, the issue of this thread is about controlling the access of a particular iOS app to ANY wifi network, in order to prevent the app from accessing the Internet via WIFI, just like it possible to block it via Cellular data.
Currently iOS allows a user to prevent an app from accessing Internet via Cellular data, but not via WIFI, and it is really confounding why not !
I guess Apple only considered the risk of an app incurring high cost of cellular consumption, assuming that WIFI is never metered nor charged (not true!), but the more important aspect to me is for privacy protection: I want to make sure a given app (that I do not entirely trust) cannot send my data to some unknown servers.
One could say "if you don't trust an app, don't use it!", but this would be a very shortsighted answer... Sometimes, the user has no choice but using a given app, notably when the app is REQUIRED to use a hardware device that was purchased. If the device cannot be used because the app steals data, then it's like the device itself was stolen from its owner!
Now, I could use the privacy settings to prevent the app from accessing the iPhone location, the iPhone camera etc... but when the app controls a third party hardware device, then the app necessary has access that device, and if the device has a GPS receiver, a camera, a microphone, ... then you can loose your privacy and totally unsuspectingly. I encountered an app that was used to display the image of a Dash cam, so the functionality is primarily local (e.g. within your car), but the app make calls to countless IP adresses in China ! Why would that be do you think?
So if you use an app and have no intention of sharing anything on the Internet with it, you should be able to forbid the app totally from accessing the Internet, without even having to ask yourself: Can I trust this app?
Going further, I think that network access for an app should be turned off from the start, and only allowed to do so by first asking the user.
@testalpha
This app you mention (WiFi Blocker) is not a solution at all for the issue we are talking about here... It is to control the usage of your WIFI access point at home by the various devices connected to it.
On the other hand, the issue of this thread is about controlling the access of a particular iOS app to ANY wifi network, in order to prevent the app from accessing the Internet via WIFI, just like it possible to block it via Cellular data.
Currently iOS allows a user to prevent an app from accessing Internet via Cellular data, but not via WIFI, and it is really confounding why not !
I guess Apple only considered the risk of an app incurring high cost of cellular consumption, assuming that WIFI is never metered nor charged (not true!), but the more important aspect to me is for privacy protection: I want to make sure a given app (that I do not entirely trust) cannot send my data to some unknown servers.
One could say "if you don't trust an app, don't use it!", but this would be a very shortsighted answer... Sometimes, the user has no choice but using a given app, notably when the app is REQUIRED to use a hardware device that was purchased. If the device cannot be used because the app steals data, then it's like the device itself was stolen from its owner!
Now, I could use the privacy settings to prevent the app from accessing the iPhone location, the iPhone camera etc... but when the app controls a third party hardware device, then the app necessary has access that device, and if the device has a GPS receiver, a camera, a microphone, ... then you can loose your privacy and totally unsuspectingly. I encountered an app that was used to display the image of a Dash cam, so the functionality is primarily local (e.g. within your car), but the app make calls to countless IP adresses in China ! Why would that be do you think?
So if you use an app and have no intention of sharing anything on the Internet with it, you should be able to forbid the app totally from accessing the Internet, without even having to ask yourself: Can I trust this app?
Going further, I think that network access for an app should be turned off from the start, and only allowed to do so by first asking the user.
This app might be what you're looking for, though it only currently supports a set number of routers
RH Rongboi wrote:
Specifically, I'd like the same ability to turn off wifi data access that I have to turn off wireless data access.
This sentence doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Can you explain it in a different way?
You can turn off an app's ability to use cellular data in Settings>Cellular Data. Unless an app has the built in ability, you can't prevent a particular app from using WiFi, only turn WiFi off completely for the whole phone.
Sounds like you figured out my question. Apparently Apple doesn't allow a user to prevent an App from using WiFi. It's an all-or-nothing proposition; I can only turn off WiFi for the whole phone, not on an app-by-app basis.
Which is a shame. I can do it on OSX and Windows. I can do it in Android. I can do it if I jailbreak my iPhone. But apparently I can't do it in iOS natively? And Apple doesn't allow any firewall apps in the store that do it?
Why do you need to do this?
Two primary use cases:
1) To limit WiFi data costs. Like wireless data, in some places WiFi data is metered, or at least capped, at a certain consumption level. Using more costs more. I'd like to limit how much I use.
2) Many apps, too many to count now, use data access to transmit and receive information I don't want to transmit or receive. For example, I have an "solitaire" app that wants to access the WiFi network to operate -- clearly it's communicating with a server somewhere. But it runs just fine in scenarios where there is no network (for example: airplanes with airplane mode activated). I'd like that particular app to live in a form of "airplane mode" essentially all the time.
To implement the feature is simple, Apple has already implemented it for wireless data. Now that I know they haven't done this for WiFi, I'm wondering why... particularly when it's available both on Android and via jailbroken apps.
Submit your feedback directly to Apple using the appropriate link on the Feedback page:
Hi,
Has there been any approach for this? I'm looking for the same. Background: I want to use the iPhone to send email via a SatPhone WiFi hotspot. Due to the high connection cost I have no interest of other apps accessing the online connection during that time. Besides disabling all background activities and closing all apps, setting emails to "manual", I'm not sure which apps are still accessing the data connection?
iOS 9 doesn't seem to fix this issue. đ
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block app wifi access ios
