Apple can now scan iCloud files and photos shared through the "Anyone with link" option for harmful content, and it can take action if necessary, under iOS 27.3.
The option is the one that lets anyone who holds the URL open a shared item. Any file or photo shared that way falls within the scan. Apple's stated power covers both the check itself and a response to whatever it turns up.
This is not Apple's first attempt at content scanning in iCloud. In August 2021, the company announced a system that would compare photos on a user's device against a database of known child sexual abuse material (CSAM) before they uploaded to iCloud Photos. The comparison relied on hashes, which are digital fingerprints of known images. Privacy and security researchers pushed back hard, arguing that scanning on the device could be widened to other content. Apple delayed the plan in September 2021 and said in December 2022 that it would not go ahead with it.
The new approach differs in where the line sits. The 2021 design reached into the device. The iOS 27.3 scan covers content a user has chosen to make reachable by anyone with a URL, which is a more public act than keeping a photo in a private library. That distinction may blunt some of the objections the earlier plan drew, though it also means Apple is now looking at user content in a way it backed away from before.
Other large cloud providers, Google and Microsoft among them, have long checked content on their servers for known abuse imagery, so Apple is closer to industry practice than it was.
Apple shelved scanning on the device in 2022. In iOS 27.3, it scans what users put behind a shareable link.