Here’s What Actually Happens When You Don’t Update Your iPhone

Often, iOS updates contain patches to security vulnerabilities that could allow hackers and bad actors to gain access to kernel privileges. To give you a fair idea, kernel refers to the core of a device’s operating system that manages almost all the operations on your device. It is responsible for managing hardware resources on your iPhone, such as the RAM and the CPU, to apps you’ve installed. Hence, by gaining access, bad actors can access your iPhone, including all the hardware resources such as storage, data transmitters, and more. 

While Apple does its best to keep such issues under control, some of them slip into the final build of iOS that is released for users. Bad actors are not always aware of all the vulnerabilities, and Apple is good at fixing them in time. However, those security flaws actively exploited before the company can fix them are called zero-day vulnerabilities. Then there are other vulnerabilities specific to apps and services such as Safari web browser, Apple’s HomeKit, iCloud and more (via Apple). 

Compiling information from several pages on the company’s website, Apple has fixed more than 170 security issues since it launched iOS 15, including 39 fixes released with the latest iOS 15.6. We’re not even counting the fixes released as a part of fractional updates. Hence, you’re risking your iPhone if you’ve been running an older iOS version or even using the iPhone 13 with an older version of iOS 15.