If you like your privacy, and controlling if and how online companies track you, you should like Apple devices. Of the biggest tech companies–including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook–Apple is the most privacy focused. They can afford to be “the privacy company”, given they make most of their money selling you hardware (with high margins), and they’re betting privacy is of great value to Apple customers. Some companies make money selling your history and preferences to advertisers, political groups, or more malicious organizations. Apple does not, and is helping you fend off those who do. Here are a couple recent examples of Apple’s focus on user privacy and transparency in data tracking.
App Tracking Transparency
Apple updated iPhone and iPad operating systems (iOS and iPadOS) to version 14.5 this week. Once you update your device to 14.5 (and you definitely should…right now…go ahead, I’ll wait), you’ll likely see more pop-up windows asking whether or not you’d like to allow your Apps to track you and your data. It may seem annoying at first, but the messages or short, simple, and welcome assuming you value awareness and control over your own data and privacy. Apple calls it App Tracking Transparency, and describes it in this short Apple video. For even better understanding, check out this 8-minute Wall Street Journal video in which Joanna Stern talks with Apple Software Engineering Senior VP Craig Federighi about the transparency & privacy features in iOS 14.5 and how they counter App & ad tracking.
App Privacy
If you’ve opened the Apple App Store recently on your iPhone, iPad or Mac, you may have noticed a new App Privacy section below Ratings & Reviews on any App page. In this area, Apple asks App developers to openly declare what data they collect on users who download and use their App. Some Apps don’t track you, and will say “Data Not Collected” in App Privacy, as shown below for Magnet for Mac.
Unfortunately, some companies use their Apps to harvest a lot of your data, even data their Apps don’t need to work, often in order to sell your data to other companies or government agencies. Below is the App Privacy section for Google Earth for iPad. It makes sense that Google Earth might need your Location to place you on the Earth, but does it really need your Contact Info? Clicking on See Details shows what Other Data of yours is tracked by Google.
For over a decade, Apps simply took your data and sent it to online company servers for monetization, mostly without your knowledge. Technically, they had your consent since you tapped OK or Accept buttons at the end of absurdly long User License Agreements (ULA) that no one other than a corporate lawyer ever reads or understands…you remember agreeing, right?! Sneaky App developers count on your unwitting complicity in surveillance business models. Now, Apple is simply asking them to tell you what data they intend to collect before you download their Apps, and then to ask permission for data access when you first use their Apps on your device.
Who could argue against honest transparency? Facebook, of course. Facebook attacked Apple in the NY Times and elsewhere, claiming they were “standing up to Apple”. They are against App Tracking Transparency and App Privacy, implicitly acknowledging that giving users awareness and control of data tracking is bad for Facebook’s business. Given Facebook is the most egregious privacy offender on the Internet, with a long track record of tracking, exposing and algorithmically manipulating user data and behavior, it is no wonder they fear Apple’s transparency and privacy initiatives…and the scary possibility that Google and Android phones may follow suit under public pressure, once users get a little taste of privacy. “Wait, you want us to tell users how bad we are?! What if they don’t like being spied upon, exploited, manipulated?! We can’t keep growing to over 3 billion products…er…users being open and honest with them!”
Check out the long list of your data tracked and harvested by the Facebook App below. Do you really want Facebook monitoring and selling your Health & Fitness, Financial Info, Sensitive Info?! For a real scare, click on See Details to get a very long, scrolling, detailed list of tracked data that goes on for many pages…basically, there’s not much about you Facebook doesn’t want to track, sell, and possibly lose to nefarious clients and hackers as they have a habit of doing. Yikes! Who would choose that?! This scares Facebook: newly aware users saying “NO, of course not!”
A NY Times article this week reports that in a 2019 conference for tech/media moguls (Silicon Valley meets Sun Valley), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg–still reeling from Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal breaking the year before–asked the more senior Apple CEO Tim Cook for advice on how he would handle the fallout of such a debacle. Tim told him to delete the data collected outside the core Facebook App, and stop collecting such data from his users. Mark “was stunned”, as this would undermine his user-as-product business model, and may have been his first clue that Tim would not be his ally in the surveillance economy, that Apple was tacking to the more user friendly direction of transparency and privacy. Attaboy, Tim!
Moonday 