MACFORMAT INVESTIGATES
A look at Apple’s privacy credentials
According to Apple’s declaration in its September 2020 iPhone advert, privacy was paramount for the iPhone. With its ‘Privacy. That’s iPhone’ line, the campaign emphasized that not only that privacy is important to Apple and a key part of its headline product, but that the company wants everyone to know about it. This has now become an integral part of the company’s messaging, and it has become something of a game to count how many times Apple executives mention the topic during an event.
However, to dismiss this approach as a purely business-motivated, PR-drive exercise would be somewhat unfair. There’s a lot more going on, and Apple has put in real, practical, features to give users both increased privacy and a better understanding of how their data is used and by who.
The cynical view is that as we have all become increasingly conscious of how our data is used over the years Apple has tried gain a competitive advantage and attract new customers by doubling down on privacy. And perhaps there is some truth to this.
While the likes of Google and Facebook hoover up ever more information about their users (albeit they have different reasons for doing so and use it in quite different ways), there is no doubt that many customers have found Apple’s commitment to privacy reassuring. It may even have encouraged some to buy the company’s products and use the company’s services when they otherwise wouldn’t have, putting more people into Apple’s ecosystem and more money in the company’s coffers.
Private opportunity
However, there is a more generous version of the story that has some merit too – that privacy is fundamental to Apple and is an intrinsic part of the company’s DNA. Indeed, Steve Jobs
explained the approach over a decade ago. Speaking to the journalists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the AllThingsD conference in 2010, he said: “We take privacy extremely seriously. As an example, we worry a lot about locations in phones. We worry that some 14-year-old is going to get stalked and something terrible is going to happen because of our phone.” He then explained that instead of asking apps to put up a panel warning about this because “they might not follow that rule”, the provider actually has to call Apple’s location services. Apple then puts up the panel “saying this app wants to use your location data. Is that ok with you? Every time they want to use it.” Again, this approach was introduced over a decade ago.
Advocating privacy has continued to come right from the top of Apple. In a US television interview in September 2019, CEO Tim Cook declared that “privacy in itself has become a crisis. It’s of that proportion – a crisis… You are not our product. Our products are iPhones and iPads. We treasure your data. We wanna help you keep it private and keep it safe.”
So, customers may have noticed Apple shouting about privacy more in recent years, but its interest and commitment to the issue is not new. It has though quite clearly become a ‘feature’. Indeed, we’ve seen Apple build on this idea of a ‘panel’ warning about privacy in its latest software rollouts.
Privacy and iOS 14
One of the new features to be included in iOS 14, when it arrived last September, concerns your location – instead of automatically sharing your precise location with an app’s developers, iOS 14 enables you to choose an approximate location instead. The use of Sign in with Apple – a login tool that lets you use Apple’s private email relay service instead of signing-in via your usual email, and which does not track you – has also been expanded.
Crucially, each app in the App Store now also comes with summaries of developers’ self-reported privacy practices in a way that is designed to be easy to read and understand. It is relatively easy to find too. When you search for something in the App Store, scroll down and there is a a section called ‘App Privacy’. This provides a quick summary of what data is used to track you and what data is linked to you. There is also the option to see even more privacy info about each app, if the initial label doesn’t give you want you want. To see quite the depths such labels can reach, check out the one for Facebook’s iOS app. It’s quite… detailed.
As well as these labels, apps that want to use your microphone and camera need to explicitly ask you. Furthermore, a coloured dot appears in the top right of your iPhone screen when they are being used – green for camera, orange for microphone. You can also limit the photographs individual apps have access to.
In 2021, Apple made it that all apps have had to start obtaining your permission before tracking. Essentially, Apple wants you to know who is tracking you and how, leaving it to you to decide whether or not you still want that app on your phone.
Transparency in Big Sur
Privacy reports also arrived with macOS Big Sur. Again, these reports are akin to food nutrition labels and tell you the type of data that the app might collect – things like contact information and location, and whether this is shared by third parties for tracking. They can again be found by clicking on an app in the App Store and scrolling down to the App Privacy section.
There are other features that work cross-device too. iMessages and FaceTime conversations are end-to-end encrypted across all devices. Apple cannot read them when they travel in between devices. Messages can be deleted automatically after 30 days, a year, or kept on device. Similarly, the company does not store any FaceTime calls on its servers, and they are also end-to-end encrypted.
Hey, Siri
But isn’t Siri listening? Well, no. Apple says its smart assistant is designed to do as much learning offline as is possible. Furthermore, searches and requests you might ask Siri are not associated with your Apple ID but a long string of letters and numbers, so nobody at Apple can work out that it was you asking about something a bit weird!
Internet privacy
Safari has long provided better privacy options than some of its direct rivals, but the latest version of Apple’s browser really was built around privacy. It includes Intelligent Tracking Prevention, which uses machine learning and on-device intelligence to limit cross-site tracking. This separates the third-party content that can track you from other browsing data. In practical terms, this means that if, for example, you look up a product on one website, it should not follow you around the rest of the web. You can also access a personalised Privacy Report via the browser’s toolbar or start page that shows all the cross-site trackers that tool is blocking.
Whether the company is introducing new hardware, software, or a service, the issue of privacy, and Apple’s attempt to preserve it for its users, is always highlighted by executives. Yes, this approach does give Apple a stick to beat its most obvious opponents with. However, it is also a genuine, fundamental belief that sits at the heart of the company and that it seeks to uphold, even when it might not be convenient.