Apple Lying About How Well They Protect Your Privacy
Information has surfaced that suggests may collect data from users even when they opt out of such practices, which betrays the sentiment that they put forth to consumers.
Apple is in trouble this week as they are now being charged with a class action lawsuit. The message that Apple has continued to preach and market their company under has been betrayed. This message is that they will protect your privacy. This was discovered by Mysk a team of two researchers and developers.
They discovered that Apple is tracking you even when you have opted for the device not to track you. This is a huge breach of not only trust between the company and its consumers but also in contract. When you set up any device for apple you are first prompted with the following contractual choice. “Help Apple improve its products and services by automatically sending daily diagnostic and usage data. Data may include location information.”
Even if you were to decline, according to Tommy Mysk your location is still sent. That isn’t all, unfortunately. The app store tracks by sending information about your app searches, the ads you’ve seen, and how long you have been on the app. Gizmodo, another information source, points out that what you are searching for and the news you are looking for is being recorded as well. Things such as LGBTQIA+ issues and abortion
Apple has several assurances when you set up your iPhone. The most important is that none of the collected data being sent is used to identify you personally, and that information is not being recorded. That is if you agreed not to send your information to them. If you did allow them to gather information on you. They still promise that all information gathered from your device will be used to correlate the information with their existing data. It cannot be used to identify you, according to apple.
This turned out not to be false. A piece of code sent back to Apple from your device called “ISID” Mysk had verified to send up red flags. This is a “Directory Services Identifier,” an ID that uniquely identifies an iCloud account. Meaning Apple’s analytics can, in fact, personally identify you and your device. It has been confirmed that ISID is the same as DSID. The code that Apple uses to identify your iCloud account.
Apple had applied this new choice to its users across all their devices as part of its new policy for privacy protection. This action greatly hurt social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as this prevented their sites from using their consumer’s personal information for profit.
This means that your privacy is likely still being sold by Apple as it had attempted in this oversight to continue to gather and use your information. According to 9to5Mac, “Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.” Also, stating that the company has much to lose by this nefarious behavior and deception.
This breach of trust and contract by Apple and its privacy statement agreements extends much further than just the iPhone. This affects your Apple Music, Apple TV, Books, and Stocks. Apple is going to watch your stock portfolio and the stocks you monitor. This alone can get them in trouble if they are recording this information, as it can be seen as stock manipulation. This alone is a federal crime.
