UK Government Removes Encryption Advice From Websites

The U.K. government has removed advice to use encryption services from its guidance page for high-risk individuals.

This comes after a months-long row between the government and Apple over an order requiring the tech giant to provide access to encrypted user-data to law enforcement agencies.

In an earlier version of this advice, published as a PDF in October 2024, the government advised legal professionals to use end-to-end encrypted services, explicitly naming Apple’s Advanced Data Protection as a suggested option for iOS users.

This document has now been completely scrubbed from the internet, with URL redirects put in place to funnel users to the new page that does not mention encryption in any way. 

The discovery was made by security expert Alec Muffett, who published a blog post detailing the change. The PDF was last available through the original URL on Feb. 22, 2025, meaning it disappeared sometime in the 12 days between that date and March 6, when the removal was discovered.

It’s uncertain whether this change in advice is directly connected to the Home Office’s order, but given the timing, it certainly seems suspicious. So far, no government official has responded to questions about the change.

Ultimately, this looks bad. Is the U.K. government purposefully giving advice that will weaken citizens’ digital security? Or is the change simply a face-saving exercise now that the government has forced Advanced Data Protection — a service it previously lauded — out of the country?

Either way, it’s bad news. If you’re interested in following how the story develops, we’ll continue covering it right here on Cloudwards.