Apple has been talking about privacy a lot lately.
Releasing a YouTube video on the topic, using it as a selling point in the most recent Apple
Event, and even putting up billboards about privacy on iPhone.
This is in contrast to companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, who rarely bring attention
to their privacy policies.
So why is this such an important subject for Apple?
Well, that’s exactly what I’ll explain right now.
Now the basis of Apple’s position on privacy, is that they’re trying to do right by their
customers.
Not necessarily out of the good of their own hearts, but because that’s how they increase
the lifetime value of every user and make as much revenue as possible, which comes from
hardware sales.
And one of Apple’s strongest selling points is privacy.
So they talk about it a lot in order to distinguish themselves from the competition like Google,
who is known for collecting and selling as much of their user’s data as possible.
But taking privacy seriously isn’t anything new to Apple.
Just listen to Steve Jobs talking about it back
in 2010
Just by the tone of his voice, you can tell how important privacy features were to Apple
even over a decade ago.
And the example Jobs gave of apps potentially stalking their users was quite prophetic,
since a sort’ve virtual stalking has been going on in the digital advertising space
for years.
That’s what prompted Apple to implement the App Tracking Transparency feature in iOS
14.5.
They also included an anti-stalking feature with AirTags.
But there’re much deeper reasons why tech companies should take privacy seriously.
Consider how our lives have moved from physical, to digital.
Most of us don’t have filing cabinets with our health records.
Since that data is in the health app or a third party app like MyChart.
And our banking information is in our PNC or Chase app.
Maybe you even have location data in the Find My app where your friends or family are sharing
their location.
Not to mention the personal text conversations, work emails, and internet history that almost
every user has on their device.
This huge amount of sensitive, personal information has never been located in one place before.
But with the advent of the smartphone, that’s changed.
And accessing that data is a treasure trove for hackers and extortionists who make a living
off of stealing your identity, selling your account passwords to third parties, or even
emailing you personally threatening to release private photos or conversations that could
cost you your job, unless you pay them a certain amount of money.
Something the FBI said is becoming more common.
And although it’s impossible to be sure all of your digital data is completely safe,
Apple has proven to have a much more proactive approach to protecting user data than other
companies.
For example, the FBI publicly pressured Apple into creating a version of iOS that would
bypass a device’s passcode, and allow them to access all of its locally stored data.
Which is an interesting request, since Apple products in particular use encryption as often
as possible and avoid unique device identifiers when processing data in the cloud.
All that means is Apple can’t access something like your Message conversations or iCloud
Keychain and turn them over if the FBI requested it.
This is due to something called end-to-end encryption.
Which prevents anyone from accessing the content except for the sender and recipient.
This is different than standard encryption, which a company like Apple can simply decode
since they have the encryption key.
But Apple refused to create the operating system that the FBI wanted.
Asserting that it’s impossible to unlock just one device, and creating a master key
with the potential to unlock every iOS device in the world would create a privacy and security
venerability that puts every Apple user at risk.
It’s not all accolades for Apple though, they gave up plans to fully protect their
user’s iCloud data with end-to-end encryption, since they didn’t want to negative PR that
came with regularly challenging the US government.
A former Apple software engineer said, “The legal department killed plans to introduced
end-to-end encryption for reasons you can imagine.
They decided they weren’t going to poke the bear anymore.”
So while no company is perfect, Apple is one of the only tech companies that doesn’t
traffic in user data.
Google, Amazon, and Facebook, among others, all make billions of dollars selling user
data to third party brokers and advertisers.
In fact, data recently surpassed oil as the world’s most valuable resource.
So it would almost be bad business practice for these companies to advocate for user privacy.
And that’s why Apple is highlighting their commitment to it.
Not only is advertising their commitment to protecting user privacy appealing to customers,
but it also implicitly calls into question the intent of Apple’s competition.
Like Google, who makes over 80% of their revenue from selling user data, and also happens to
be the creator of Android, the iPhone’s number one competitor.
So Apple takes privacy seriously not only because of genuine concerns over public safety,
identity theft, extortion attempts, user tracking, and data trafficking, but also because it
benefits their business.
Apple makes money from selling hardware, and if they can attract or retain more customers
because of privacy benefits, they’ll enjoy more revenue.
So that is why Apple takes privacy so seriously, this is Greg from Apple Explained, and I’ll
see you in the next video.