Is Apple the shining knight when it comes to privacy collection, as it wants us to believe?
A different business model from Facebook and Google gives it some ground to claim a tighter tower around your data. But that's not the whole story, and some changes are coming.
With the release of the news that nearly 90 million Facebook users' information was passed on to political ad targeting firm Cambridge Catalytic without their permission, tech companies are defending themselves. Consumers and lawmakers want to know how much their favorite apps have collected of their choices and movements and what they do with this personal information.
Apple has made a point of trying to distinguish its approach to consumers' information. On its website, it notes that it collects less data about us than the other big tech companies and then ensures the security by crambling it so it doesn't identify who it comes from. Additionally, it says it keeps most of the data on our devices, as opposed to Apple servers, and that it's encoded on those devices and only accessible via your pass code.
It also promises that it will make it easier to track the information the company collects about us,and to download or delete it, later this year. However, getting the data back form Apple currently is complex and slow. The new tools are to follow new privacy rules, called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which go into effect in the European Union in late May. In brief,the rules look to give the user more controls over how their data is used.
Apple insists that it "doesn't gather your personal information to sell to advertises or other organizations."Such a statement only goes so far-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a point by saving Facebook doesn't sell users' data to advertisers. either. What the social network sells is advertisers access to users, whose brands can target with all the information it's gathered from their activity
