Today, January 28, is Privacy Day, designed to raise awareness about the importance of protecting our personal information online. For this, Apple has presented a PDF entitled ” A day in the life of your data ” that through illustrations and some text gives us a clear and simple explanation of how companies track us both on the web and in apps.
“Privacy means peace of mind, it means security, and it means that you are the driver when it comes to your own data,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “Our goal is to create a technology that keeps people’s information safe and secure. We believe privacy is a fundamental human right and our teams work every day to integrate it into everything we do.”
A day in the life of your data
“A Day in the Life of Your Data” helps users better understand how third-party companies track your information through apps and websites, while describing the tools Apple provides to further track your information. transparent and give users more control. The explanation sheds light on how widespread some of these practices are. On average, the apps include six third-party trackers whose sole purpose is to collect and track people and their personal information. The data collected by these trackers is collected, shared, aggregated and monetized, fueling an industry valued at $ 227 billion a year.
The PDF, which we can download directly from the Apple website, narrates the day of a father and a daughter who go to the park and then have ice cream before returning home. A day in which the trackers continue to work, continue to collect information and know in detail all the movements of the protagonists.
In the PDF Apple explains that while the father consults the time and the route to the park, the trackers already locate the father from the beginning. They know where you live, your interests… During the car journey, there are four applications that track your location periodically. This information is sold to data brokers who, although they claim that it is anonymous, thanks to crossing the immense amount of data they have, are able to identify the father precisely. In other words, a company that the father, or we, have never heard of, or with which we have never interacted, knows all the movements in detail and with total precision.
During the journey, the daughter plays a game on a tablet and sees an advertisement for an electric scooter. An ad that does not appear by chance at all. An ad that is hyper-segmented for John, who lives in a certain city, has a specific income and has a young son. This ad will follow both the father and the daughter for several days, also appearing on their mobiles, computers, etc.
In the park, when John, the father, takes a selfie of both of them, he uses a filter app to add some bunny ears. The filter app, however, accesses all the photos on the device, including all its metadata. The photo ends up posted on a social network that links all this information with the data it already has about John. Data such as your shopping habits, your email, phone number, ad identifier, etc. On the way home, John and his daughter stop to buy ice cream. One that they buy with their credit card. Here the information on the location of the store, the amount paid and the exact date is collected.
At the end of the day, a considerable number of companies, from around the world, have updated their profiles with information about John and his daughter. These companies know where the family lives, the park they have visited, the news the father has read, the products they have viewed, the advertisements they have seen, their shopping habits and the stores they have visited.
What Apple does to give us transparency and control over our data
What a different day it would have been, for the data, not for John and his daughter, if the family used Apple platforms. In the document, Apple explains the measures they take in their hardware and software so that the least amount of personal information escapes from our control. The measures are not always infallible, and the data collection depends above all on us and our usage habits, but they are, without a doubt, of great help.
- If John had used Safari on his computer, the Intelligent Tracking Prevention system would have protected his browsing.
- Using Apple News he would have accessed personalized news according to his interest without anyone, not even Apple, knowing what he was reading, when or where.
- Using Apple Maps to query the route and navigation, their location would not have been linked to any identifier and no one would know where they went or by which way.
- The iPhone’s location access warnings, combined with the ability to share an approximate location, would prevent weather or similar apps from tracking your location.
- Using an iPad to play games, the App Tracking Transparency system would have allowed John to decide that the app where they saw the ad would not track them.
- On an iPhone John would have decided that the filters app would only have access to the selfie just taken rather than the entire photo library.
- Using the Apple Card to pay for ice cream, the bank would not have used the purchase data for marketing.
At the end of the day, Apple products and the privacy features they contain can give John and his daughter better transparency and control over how their data is shared and used.