Apple's iOS 27 found to break NordVPN's scam and phishing protection — and it isn't the only privacy tool impacted

Apple's latest iOS update has been found to undermine NordVPN's anti-phishing tool The feature that causes the issue, Connectivity Assist, is turned on by default as part of the update According to NordVPN, the issues could have been prevented Apple's new iOS 27 operating system update is undermining NordVPN’s anti-phishing tool, leaving users exposed to privacy vulnerabilities, the VPN has warned .

Connectivity Assist, a Wi-Fi Assist feature included in Apple’s twentieth operating system release, conflicts with NordVPN’s real-time protection, preventing it from working properly, the provider has found.

What’s worse? The tool is enabled by default, meaning users may not even know.

What's more, other privacy tools on your phone may also have been compromised.

The problem with Connectivity Assist (Image credit: NordVPN) Connectivity Assist optimises your Wi-Fi connection by supplementing slow or unreliable Wi-Fi connections with mobile data, detecting connection issues, and redirecting requests to your mobile operator’s DNS servers instead.

However, when NordVPN’s anti-fraud protection blocks a phishing site, Apple may also interpret the failed connection as a Wi-Fi issue and switch to mobile data—outside the VPN’s protection—thereby compromising the functionality of the NordVPN tool.

The only option currently available to ensure full protection is to disable Connectivity Assistant, so it can’t switch to mobile data when real-time protection blocks a website.

Alternatively, you can choose only to enable real-time protection when using a VPN by disabling NordVPN’s ‘always on’ option - but this still leaves them unprotected when using mobile data - just now by choice.

“People are being made to choose between two things they shouldn't have to choose between, and there's no good way for us to fix it,” Laura Tyrylyte, Head of Public Relations at NordVPN, tells TechRadar.

Can this be prevented? Could Apple have helped resolve these issues before the release? Perhaps, according to the VPN representative.

“Apple knew the feature interferes with DNS-based filtering before it shipped,” Tyrylyte notes.

“Their own support page tells people running an ad blocker to switch Connectivity Assist for that network.

Somebody spotted the conflict, it just didn’t get fixed.” Users of Pi-hole, Firewalla, and other DNS-based filtering tools had previously reported the same behaviour, and Cloudflare's WARP also stopped blocking malicious sites following the update, NordVPN stressed.

Apple engineers have suggested alternative solutions in the forums, but these only work if users configure the DNS settings themselves, notes Tyrylyte.