Apple Collects the Least Amount of User Data Out of Major Tech Companies: Study
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
This is actually a lie, and the article appears to be mainly clickbait for StockApps. Notice that the chart says "Source:digitalinformationworld". I found this here:
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2022/05/study-shows-...
But that article is just a rehash of the original source:
https://www.security.org/resources/data-tech-companies-have/
So we have here an extremely roundabout series of links, from macrumors to stockapps to digitalinformationworld to security.org.
"Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Centerfield has the following description on its page:
> "Super-powered customer acquisition. We deliver outcome-based personalized omni-channel digital marketing solutions."
Not quite the authority I would trust regarding user privacy.
All they did was read the privacy policies of all these companies and make these pretty charts comparing what they can and can't collect on you. Then they added up the points. It's extremely transparent about its methodology. And something you can easily check yourself (i.e. open up the privacy policies yourself and double check that Apple in fact can NOT collect your metadata on your stored photos)
Google: F
Facebook: C
Amazon: B-
Apple: A+
Twitter: C-
Amazing how the “summary” made Facebook look to be better than Amazon and on par with Apple.
Least amount of user data or not, reports like these are alarming: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf
It seems that even with maximum security settings, Apple will always know where I am, who is nearby, what mobile networks I use, and what computer networks I use.
Espionage and sabotage aside, that's the kind of information the US government has used to decide whether someone, or an entire location full of random people, should be the target of a drone strike.
I don't worry about being killed by a drone strike, but the fact that this data is collected from everyone everywhere is worrying, and in my opinion it means Apple and Google are complicit in killings like these.
(a) Nobody is forcing you to turn on the "Find My" or "Share My" features
(b) If you use a mobile phone network, then frankly its game over. You can't bash Apple for that. If you use a mobile network, then your mobile network can track you, the government can track you, and any man and his dog with an IMSI tracker in a box can track you. Doesn't matter if you use an iPhone or $insert_name_of_whatever_phone_you_think_is_more_secure.(b) Yes, it's possible my mobile operator and my government can do that. Which I am ok with. What is not ok is that Apple and the US government can, in particular since I am not in the US nor was I ever given the option to decline this data collection.
I suspect if you were given access to the NSA's dataset you would likely find they have more than enough data on you already, they don't need Apple for that !
Especially if you live in a FVEY country or a US-friendly country, or your data transits such a country.
Apple is the safest company according to their PR. It has this feature which lets you decide on your security preference. But in fact it doesn't on most important aspects.
And your argument is: that's fine, because others are doing too and more?
I don’t see how you could have a mobile phone, that also uses wifi, without those things being true. (One correction: I don’t think Apple knows who is near you unless they’re also on an Apple device or uses an Apple app on said device)
Genuinely curious how you think a company can route your traffic effectively and efficiently without knowing those things…
Do I really need to go on?
The kind of person whose threat model includes worrying about being targeted by governments is not the average person. Everyone is being targeted by ad behemoths like Google and Facebook, all the time, in every way they can possibly manage.
I'd say one could draw some pretty close conclusions for a company like facebook, as their products needs to interface not only with the user but also other facilities to gain data, and the assumption of interconnecting this data could give you a good foundation.
But to then reach a comparable insight on how much data Apple collects, a company where the typical user is using Hardware provided by Apple, an OS by Apple, logged-in using an Apple ID and using a multitude of applications and services which all use SSO connecting to Apple servers....?
Apple, not so sure. They might even retract themselves from the European market.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/googles-scans-private-... (Not linking to NYT because paywall)
Apple sending details every moment about what programs you're using ? Pull the other one !
I'm not going to name names, but I think we all know there are one or two very well-known IT news sites that hold a grudge against Apple due to stupid reasons. Any time they publish anything about Apple its barely disguised Apple bashing.
MS Windows Defender also has extensive cloud protection enabled: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defe...
Which of course can be disabled. CLR check can also be disabled on windows if someone wants less requests from hosts and could be harmless for some specific configurations.
Tip of the day: Did you know that there are Attack surface reduction rules that can be enabled to, for example "Block Office communication application from creating child processes" https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defe... ? :)
Have you ever tried to disable Defender? Just letting you know it's not nearly as simple as a checkbox.
More secure in the way my home would be more secure if I had a cop permanently stationed in my living room. I'll secure my own machine, thank you very much.
And a JP Morgan analyst said that Apple’s focus on privacy will limit their ability to grow it: https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/15/apple-ad-business...
I agree that it leaves a bad taste in the mouth for them to have ads, but they do genuinely collect far less data than other platforms.
Specifically on ads, that's actually about Apple advertising apps in the App Store, which is the store people on iOS go to to buy apps. Again, no murders involved so far as I'm aware, not even sharing data with third parties.
I strongly disagree the claim its not unethical - if I don't want to participate, I have no real way of doing so, apart form not buying their products at all. All internal settings re security lie about their behavior. Maximum security settings have only 1 morally defendable meaning - we have no business checking what user do, and respect this all the time. The fact that some search on their store may be sub-optimal is completely irrelevant.
From company focusing its PR heavily on how they value their user's privacy thats highly unethical
If I would be on some other forum I would use the expression "paid shills" a quite a lot here in this discussion, but I believe its mostly folks who put aside their smart and look on technology like this mainly through emotions. Which is always flawed approach long term.
For example maximum security settings could include malware protection which might include application profiling, which would require logging application and therefore user activity. It just depends how you look at it.
It's what the data is used for and who it is made available to.
Most people don't like the outcome, not how it occurs. IE it's not just that FB is invasively tracking you, it's that they are using their knowledge of you in creepy ways.
If they didn't track you at all themselves, but still somehow got the same exact same kind of data, and still used their knowledge of you in creepy ways, i don't' think most people would feel too much better about that.
Apple isn't an advertising company (like Google or Facebook) or a general merchant (like Amazon).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...
That's not what I read.
"I believe that the iPhone maker will eventually expand search ads to Maps. It also will likely add them to digital storefronts like Apple Books and Apple Podcasts."
"And TV+ could generate more advertising with multiple tiers"
Basically, all they're saying that's known fact is that Apple wants more ad revenue, and then speculating on how they could do it.
I have no idea if Apple is planning to expand ads, but neither does the author of this article.
You mean "The Big Hack" Bloomberg?
You mean the outlet that announced bombastically that Apple devices had spy chips in them? And then when basically everyone involved said "no that's bullshit", and Apple devices were disassembled and very experienced people looked exactly where Bloomberg said the chips were, and there were no chips, Bloomberg said nothing? And has still posted no retraction, no updates, and no apologies for this blatant pack of lies?
Apple arguably collect way more user data than anyone else. Heck, they are collecting your biometric.
The difference is that this article is comparing Apple (a hardware company) against ad support companies like "Google, Twitter, Amazon, and Facebook" who need to collect as much data in order to target ads/products to you.
Apple collects and has access to much more data, they just aren't targeting ads at you YET (expect to see way more ads in their App Store as they push harder into services)
All that has been said is that Apple wants to build a platform to manage the ads across its apps.
It's a completely different situation from Facebook and Google.
But that still doesn't preclude Apple from still being able to target ads based on this data. Instead of Google/Facebook who "push" ads to you based on targeting, the App Store could be "pulling" ads based on on-device data that it doesn't share with Apple.
Apple is a black box. You can't know if they are collecting specific data.
At least with FOSS Google, you can figure out generally what's being sent.
Conspiracy: a pro Apple article means macrumors gets early access to something. (Source: Nintendo does this)
Meanwhile, if they could, Facebook would embed a chip in you to collect every piece of biometric data about you, as well as recording and videoing the environment around you 24x7x365.
Google, well, we all know, Google will do whatever it takes to enable them to sell more ads on their platform. Nobody who takes their privacy seriously should have a Google account.
Apple's competitors have set the bar in the gutter, frankly.
Given they are pushing very hard now on expanding their ad network, we'll see how it plays out.
But overall it seems like complete folly to believe any company really cares. Some may have good leaders who care deeply at a point in time (and I suspect Tim Cook really does), but that will certainly come and go, and you don't want this kind of thing to be dependent on who is in the driver's seat at a given point in time.
What I see is that free as in no money sells well, while free as in freedom is not that interesting. We have what we deserve and what we have worked really hard to obtain. And this is sad.
One might argue that the users were "tricked" into believing that an ads-based system could be not evil, and that now that technology has become a key part of society it should be regulated (like driving, for instance, is). But then, again, we choose our regulators, and we have the regulators we deserve, so ...