I think more likely there WAS a change of some kind, but it wasn’t to enhance security, it was to enable some entity (Apple/Microsoft/Google/Verizon/State Government/Federal Government) to see my traffic patterns.
There has been talk of this by Apple, Microsoft, and Google to combat this ‘pandemic’ to help figure out where infected people might have gone.
For example, if you did a web search for a store’s hours of operation, that would indicate you may have gone there.
Yes, I am pretty suspicious. This is what they do in Communist China.
I have news for you, what you describe can be done without those changes, as for security patches, you would not know what effect they’ve had, holes in the browser’s security are found all the time, they get patched and no one really knows about it....
As far as being tracked, if you have a cell phone and it’s turned on, you can be tracked 24/7
Everyone knows the powers that be are trying to get people onboard with “contact tracking”. This is the monitoring of people and who they are in physical contact with. Think of this as “Find your Phone/Friends” on steriods. Recently there was an app that could tell you who was in your general vicinity and if they were single. This app was quickly supressed but it did see the light of day. It is my firm belief this technology has been around for awhile and was being actively employed. Think of the reports how people would be talking and up pops an ad about whatever the conversation was about. There is more to this than people think. The “contact tracking” is just a way for this technology to get more of a legal foothold in America. You thought the NSA recording our conversations was scary, think of if they could record every move, every action that a person does in addition to their conversations. That is downright past Freddy Kruger terrifying. This has gone beyond the tin hat stage.