A message from Tim Cook about Apple’s commitment to your privacy.
At Apple, your trust means everything to us. That’s why we respect your privacy and protect it with strong encryption, plus strict policies that govern how all data is handled.
Security and privacy are fundamental to the design of all our hardware, software, and services, including iCloud and new services like Apple Pay. And we continue to make improvements. Two-step verification, which we encourage all our customers to use, in addition to protecting your Apple ID account information, now also protects all of the data you store and keep up to date with iCloud.
We believe in telling you up front exactly what’s going to happen to your personal information and asking for your permission before you share it with us. And if you change your mind later, we make it easy to stop sharing with us. Every Apple product is designed around those principles. When we do ask to use your data, it’s to provide you with a better user experience.
We’re publishing this website to explain how we handle your personal information, what we do and don’t collect, and why. We’re going to make sure you get updates here about privacy at Apple at least once a year and whenever there are significant changes to our policies.
A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product. But at Apple, we believe a great customer experience shouldn’t come at the expense of your privacy.
Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don’t “monetize” the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.
One very small part of our business does serve advertisers, and that’s iAd. We built an advertising network because some app developers depend on that business model, and we want to support them as well as a free iTunes Radio service. iAd sticks to the same privacy policy that applies to every other Apple product. It doesn’t get data from Health and HomeKit, Maps, Siri, iMessage, your call history, or any iCloud service like Contacts or Mail, and you can always just opt out altogether.
Finally, I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.
Our commitment to protecting your privacy comes from a deep respect for our customers. We know that your trust doesn’t come easy. That’s why we have and always will work as hard as we can to earn and keep it.
Tim
The site in question is:
http://www.apple.com/privacy/
In general it can be said that we never see any company that is against your privacy. They all love you and want you to trust them.
In the case of Facebook they make an exception to this rule and have - more or less -proclaimed privacy as some old thing from the past.
Tim Cook does attack Facebook and Google here and he is 100 % correct in what he says about them.
Then he gives a lot of reasons why you should trust Apple.
It is not that he cannot seriously violate your privacy - he just chooses not do do so for the given reasons.
So the intentions seem good - for now.
If we analyse this section:
Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers.
Apple has chosen not to build a profile based on your email or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers.
So the legitimate questions would be:
- For what other reasons do Apple do it then?
Or doesn't Apple do it at all?
It is a fact that Apple does censor nudity on their devices after some strange American standard - how do they identify the content?
This looks very good too:
We don’t “monetize” the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.
Now that is a massive "shift of mind", or at the very best "not true yet".
Apple is (or will be) monitoring how often you pass coupon products in stores like "Viking passed the Pepsi 10 times last week at Q-mart", and they will have records of how much you paid for what and where.
You may claim that this is only a shift from the credit card companies who do the same, but combined with all the other privacy violating potential an iPhone and its likes has; it ads up to a huge threat to your privacy.
These "pay with Apple" services are "sold" and Apple is monetizing it heavily.
So yes; you really better trust them....
But when it comes to the point does it matter if you trust Apple?
If the government wants what Apple has, they have to deliver it.
This goes for data gathered in Europe or anywhere else, too.
Statements like:
I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.
..are not worth the paper they are written upon.
They do not have to work with any agency to create the backdoor - they must simply give them the backdoor they have if the government so requires.
Or it must be clear that no backdoor does exist; which it is not here.
It is clear for everyone by now that the NSA does not require Apple's allowance for accessing their servers.
There is a history for tech companies to not fix errors until the agencies have been able to exploit them though...
It is not clear if this constitutes "working with" in the context of this letter.
So again - you better trust them...
Does this make Apple the worst violator of your privacy then?
Probably not - but they are high up on the list, since their products are so widely used.
Microsoft's commitment is far less specific and much more "trust our internal routines" minded. Not much of an commitment but lots of "trust us".
Google are openly showing how they violate your privacy and count on their addictive and innovative products to make you ignore it.
Facebook is a disaster in terms of privacy
They will share anything you put out there. And it is regarded a security risk for police people in many countries to "be" on Facebook.
