Apple noted Data Privacy day on 28th January by releasing an informative piece on privacy titled “A Day in the Life of Your Data”. It is an easy to understand guide/report which everyday consumers can understand. It explains how apps and services track users on the internet and also details features built into all Apple products that people can use to keep their data safe.
The Cupertino based company released a major set of privacy features with the release of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14. The most interesting one has to be the “privacy nutrition label” which provides users a detailed report of the data an app collects. Facebook was very critical about such a feature being released and it continues to be even now.
A fundamental human right
“Privacy means peace of mind, it means security, and it means you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to your own data,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “Our goal is to create technology that keeps people’s information safe and protected. We believe privacy is a fundamental human right, and our teams work every day to embed it in everything we make.”
Apple has always sold its products with a promise of respecting people’s data and never using it to make money. All recent iPhones, iPads, and Macs also feature special chips for processing machine learning tasks without ever sending user’s data to the cloud. The company has also added several features to Safari to reduce tracking on the web and automatically disables ads which do not follow basic guidelines.
Apple’s new data privacy tools ensure that people have greater control over their personal information. Data brokers and online advertisers will now have to act more responsibly when dealing with consumers who use third party applications on Apple devices,” said Jeff Chester, Executive Director, Center for Digital Democracy.
