Earlier this year, just after the whole Cambridge Analytica incident was uncovered, it was also revealed that Facebook collects and stores a scary amount of information about you. This led to a huge outcry among consumers who were creeped out by this behavior from Facebook and wondered just how much data other companies had collected about them. Apple has always had a privacy-focused approach and it has always respected the data and privacy of its customers.
So, how much data does the company collect about its users? As Zack Whittaker for ZDNet finds out, not much. Along with Facebook, Twitter, and Google, Zack requested Apple to send him an archive of all the data it had collected about him over the years. While Facebook, Twitter, and Google took about an hour to send him the required data, Apple took little over a week. However, the difference was in the amount of data collected.
The files sent from Google, Facebook, and Twitter ranged from a few hundred megabytes to a couple of gigabytes. What about Apple, you ask? It sent Zack two dozen Excel files weighing just over 5MB. Going through the data, it is clear that Apple keeps a very limited amount of information about its users. Apart from the usual account details, it keeps a log of every time you log into iCloud or one of your devices downloads data from the service. There’s a similar spreadsheet just for your iCloud email account which keeps a track of the devices that you log in from and access your emails. None of the spreadsheets contain any personal information or details of the emails though.
Apple also keeps a log for FaceTime and iMessage, but since both services are end-to-end encrypted, it only keeps a record of when an attempt is made to make a FaceTime call or send an iMessage. It has no information on whether the call was successfully placed or the message was successfully delivered or not.
Other data that Apple has collected about Zack includes every single Apple device and accessories he has purchased along with their serial numbers, MAC addresses for network connectivity, and any other information that might help the company identify the device. There’s also another file that provides information on the number of times Zack had interacted with Apple’s customer support along with details of his problem and the outcome of the call. There are a bunch of other Excel files but none of them contain any sensitive information that could identify him.
It is important to note here that Apple will only provide the account holder with all the above details. It will simply not share this data with anyone else, including any law enforcement agency. Unlike Google, Facebook, and Twitter, Apple does not allow users to download their account data. However, it would be doing so soon so as to comply with the new GDPR rules.
Our Take
It is great to see Apple live up to its claims and collect a minimal amount of data on it users while still offering them a variety of services and products. Unlike Facebook and Google, Apple does not rely on mining the data of its users to show them targeted ads which in turn would help it earn its bread and butter.
[Via ZDNet]