Society is increasingly aware of how seemingly innocent data points can be used in unintended ways. Some of those ways are useful, such as letting you know that you came close to a Covid-19 carrier without knowing it. Others are not so innocent, such as paying more for an airline ticket because an algorithm thinks that you’re rich.
Maybe you’re one of the millions of people who took an online personality quiz, just for fun, and years later find that you’ve contributed data to Facebook, who then granted access to Cambridge Analytica, who in turn used it to influence Brexit, the 2016 USA election and who knows what else. Perhaps it bothers you to be “part of the problem.”
Interestingly, the most revealing data of all is something you probably never even thought about: where you fit in social networks. Without knowing anything about you directly, a lot can be deduced simply by knowing who you hang out with. Conversely, your friends’ income, attitude, likes and dislikes are revealed in part by what the system knows about YOU. The old saying “you are who your friends are” turns out to be true.
The unfortunate, undeniable and unsavory fact is: almost everyone has made a Faustian bargain with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, and many others. We trade saleable information about ourselves to watch free videos of cats doing weird things. And in doing so, we inadvertently sell out our friends as well.
But this article isn’t about those sorts of things; we’ll talk about all that some other time.
We’re going to talk about how Apple is Weaponizing Privacy.
Apple? Weaponizing Privacy? Now, even those of you who dislike Apple might wonder about that. Rest assured, I’m not claiming that Apple is selling (or giving away) data about their users. In fact, quite the opposite: Apple’s business model is based on building a very pleasant ecosystem where all devices work seamlessly together. An ecosystem where you can “cut” text on your iPhone and paste it into a document on your Mac and do all manner of other cool things. Whenever possible, Apple prefers that processing happens on your phone instead of their servers (saves them a lot of money, while at the same time improving performance for you). It’s actually a good idea to do that: if Apple has not collected certain data it cannot be stolen from them! Any data that they DO collect, they want to keep just for themselves, not give it to some other company to profit from.
Ultimately, Apple wants your money, not your data. Frankly, I’m okay with that. It’s a simple transaction that a simple man like myself understands: I give Apple money and in return they give me tech that I find valuable. This is a completely above-board transaction. Meanwhile, all those other companies and products give you “free stuff” and instead of asking you to open your wallet, they steal data about you for resale. It’s analogous to an honest merchant versus a pickpocket, and I like the merchant’s approach.
Still doesn’t sound like Apple is weaponizing anything, does it? It sounds like they’re just doing good stuff for their customers. That’s true. Apple’s business model is very clear:
- Apple will provide you with cool hardware and software.
- The operating systems will be free, as will a good word processor, a messaging system, a spreadsheet, presentation software, email, document storage and lots more. But Apple’s kind of “free” is not done with the intent of gathering data about you for later sale. Apple’s intent is to keep you within their “walled garden.”
- Everything Apple will work together. The whole is much better than the sum of the parts.
- The customer will enjoy the “walled garden.” It’s not a prison, it’s a place where you get more time to enjoy your life, because everything “just works.”
- Customers will therefore continue to spend money on Apple’s products and services. In 2019, Fortune magazine determined that if Apple’s AirPods product was a separate company, it would rank #384 in the Fortune 500. For example, that’s higher than Foot Locker, Hershey, Oshkosh, JetBlue Airways, Weyerhaeuser, NCR, Avon, Ralph Lauren, Coca-Cola, Harley-Davidson, Western Union, Revlon, Electronic Arts, or Twitter. That’s just the AirPods. Think about that! https://fortune.com/2019/08/06/apple-airpods-business/
Apple sincerely wants to protect your privacy. Privacy is built into their DNA (with good reason if you think about it). But even if it wasn’t a DNA-level core value, it’s in Apple’s own best interest to protect your privacy. By keeping you happy, you continue to spend money on their products. By processing and leaving data on your device instead of Apple servers, it saves Apple a lot of computing and storage dollars.
All good, right? Absolutely. But it still doesn’t sound like weaponization… unless you’re Google or Facebook or any of hundreds of other products and companies:
- making Privacy central to their value proposition results in Apple continually reducing the ability of Apps, search engines (e.g. Google) and websites (e.g. Facebook, Instagram) to track users. In turn, this significantly hurts the income of Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.
- each person who joins the Apple ecosystem reduces by one the number of people supplying data to Apple’s competitors. While making life better for their customers, Apple simultaneously hurts their competitors.
Privacy is Apple’s weapon!
iOS 14 raises Apple’s emphasis on privacy to new levels:
- continued strong support for DuckDuckGo as an alternative to Google
- a tiny but bright indicator in the status bar now shows when your microphone or camera are being accessed
- some apps monitor what you’re doing in other apps (cross-app tracking). If an app does that, Apple will now tell you about it and let you choose to allow or prohibit it.
- some websites require certain extensions to function properly. If you install those extensions, you are able to stop them being active (collecting data) unless you’re using a site where you specifically allowed it.
- iOS 14 automatically alerts you if passwords saved on your device are listed as having been breached. This is a HUGE deal, because they don’t just tell you about the problem, they also help you change to a new secure password.
- for each website you visit, you can request a report that tells you whether or not that website has been tracking you. If it has been, Apple even tells you where your data went.
- instead of Sign In with Google, Facebook or Twitter, you can use Sign In with Apple. Of course, if you use our BeLooped product, that won’t be an issue (we offer security without passwords at all).
- and a bunch more.
To summarize: Apple has turned Privacy into a competitive advantage. It’s such a powerful competitive advantage that it’s a weapon that the competitors are having trouble negating. That’s because the business model of Google, Facebook, Twitter and many other “free services” makes it impossible for them to even try to out-privacy Apple. They cannot both enhance your privacy while also tracking your activities and selling your personal information!
As a special added bonus for us iOS users, this battle also makes it impossible for Apple to follow the Google/Facebook/etc. business model. They also cannot both protect your privacy and sell information about you.
Personally, I’m happy with Apple choosing to be on the Privacy side of the “Privacy or Tracking” equation. In my view, Google and Facebook (and others) are vampire squids after the juicy aspects of everyone’s lives. To me, it’s a battle of good (privacy) versus evil (tracking and selling).
I joined the privacy crusade many years ago… it’s why we created BeLooped. The more I learn, the happier I am that we’re fighting alongside Apple in this battle for privacy and civilized online behaviour.
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Addendum
This just in! For those of you who think I’m crazy, take a look at this article from Reuters: https://reut.rs/3e7oSjD Short version is that as of 03Jul2020, sixteen marketing associations in Europe (some backed by Facebook and/or Google) are criticizing Apple. They don’t like the fact that in iOS 14, Apple will require user permission before allowing tracking of their activities across apps and websites other than the one they are using at the moment.