Apple employees arrested for selling private user data in China

theguardian.com

9 points·typingduck··5 comments

Heavily discussed yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14513184

Misleading title. They were, according to the article, employees of an Apple “domestic direct sales company and outsourcing company”.

It's a good thing Apple, Google and Facebook care deeply about our privacy and would never abuse the trust of their users. Or the users' lack of interest in protecting one's privacy.

In regards to the sarcasm, Google and Facebook "the companies" purposely use a users data in ways that can abuse their privacy to offer features they believe would be beneficial, so they can get more users and make more money. Where is Apple stands on the other side where it attempts not to use user data in such a way, and uses their strength in privacy as a reason to get more users and make more money. This article is about some rogue employees in China breaking the law on their own, not Apple. Very different than Google the company instruction employees to build software that may concern user privacy.

The sarcasm was more aimed at the fact that a company's good intentions are ultimately irrelevant. One of the reason we don't want to trust our government with all of our data is that even if the current government behaves perfectly, you never know what is coming down the road - either in terms of government changing, or the data falling in the hands of specific government people with ill intent.

Likewise, the big conglomerates' good intentions are not enough to make giving them access to all your personal data justifiable.

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