Seems like this odd behaviour appears when the build configuration is set to "Debug", you can set it to "Release" to prevent the injection of "https://example.com" on userActivity.webpageURL. I can't find a way to disable it on "Debug" rather than injecting more code to handle that case. I hope someone at Apple gives a real answer.

There are other situations where this makes a lot of sense and doesn't affect privacy, essentially it is a way for the user to know their phone's mDNS name, and enable network utilities. I develop Pocket Pass Manager, an offline password manager, to be able to access your passwords from other devices the phone creates a web server, so the user can open an explorer on the local network and access their keys there without anything traveling the internet. So, how to access the web server? I just display the mDNS name (E.g., jorges-iphone.local) to the user, when is typed on a web explorer on the local network, it resolves the phone's local IP address, and access the webpage. For users this is way easier than typing the whole IP address. Right now on iOS17 beta, the only thing the user sees can see is localhost.local, unusable. I understand the privacy concerns, but this change affects the user negatively in many scenarios.