Apple has made a small but important change to its iCloud service, meaning users setting up a brand new iPhone or iPad will no longer be asked whether or not they'd like their content sent to Apple for storage and syncing across devices.
The company's iCloud terms of service, which were updated the week before the release of the new iPhone 6s, now state that iCloud will automatically be enabled when setting up a new iOS 9 device. In the past, users have been prompted to enable iCloud or leave it off during setup.
To be informed of the change, users would need to read through the lengthy terms and conditions that appear during setup (it's at the top of section B), which they are of course instructed to do but which hardly anybody will. The fact that no specific confirmation is given in setup means users may not be aware iCloud is keeping a copy of their data until they receive a message that their iCloud drive is full (which could be a long or short period of time depending on the user; the default iCloud size is 5GB).
As always, users can turn iCloud off or specify which content will be uploaded by going to 'iCloud' in their device's settings once the device is set up.
iCloud keeps copies of your devices' mail messages, contacts, calendar appointments, notes and more online, so you can access them from any device. It can also makes backups of your settings, upload new photos as they're taken, enable your device to be located when lost and let you save documents and content from apps to the cloud.
All aspects of iCloud are now turned on by default when setting up a new device on iOS 9, except for two. Keychain, the feature that saves the passwords and credit card numbers you enter in the Safari browser, still requires the user to manually turn it on. Email will also not be synced without the user turning it on from the settings
Users upgrading their existing devices to iOS 9 will not have iCloud turned on if they've previously disabled it, Apple's terms of service say. Users setting up a new device from a backup will have their settings maintained as well.
