He reports on data privacy for The New York Times, that why he uses an Apple iPhone

Nick Confessore, an investigative reporter who has written about social media and data privacy, has changed his tech habits after what he has learned. How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Nick Confessore, an investigative reporter, discussed the tech he’s using. He prefers an iPhone to Android phones because of Apple’s privacy protections.

A few snippets from his interview:

• I use an iPhone, because Apple has some reasonable tech in place to protect your privacy. (Android phones, running Google’s operating system, are voracious and arguably unscrupulous collectors of information about their owners; an Android phone with Chrome open sends your location back to Google about 300 times a day, according to one study.) I’ve turned off location tracking for almost all of the apps I use, and I’ve tried to limit what Google apps I have on my iPhone. For search, I mostly use DuckDuckGo, a privacy-optimized search engine that chooses not to collect or save certain kinds of data about the people who use it.

• Once I started reporting deeply on Facebook, I deleted all Facebook-owned apps from my phone, including Instagram. I don’t know exactly who has access to the data those apps collect, but while meeting with confidential sources, I don’t want to risk that an app on my phone might be sending Facebook my location.

• I’ve come to the view that no effective privacy-protection product is really possible without clearer — and probably more stringent — laws governing what data companies are allowed to collect and what rights I have to control my own information. If such laws did come into play, it would open the door to interesting private-sector privacy solutions.

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: What he said.

Here’s hoping that 2019 is the year when the insanity finally stops! If it takes an act of Congress for the right to privacy to be restored, so be it. May our elected officials find the will to resist the lobbyist onslaught from the likes of privacy-trampling Google and Facebook, personal data abusers. — MacDailyNews, January 7, 2019

SEE ALSO:
Hackers infiltrate California family’s Nest surveillance camera, send warning of incoming North Korea missile attack – January 23, 2019
Apple CEO Cook calls for U.S. Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation in TIME op-ed – January 17, 2019
Roger McNamee: I mentored Mark Zuckerberg. I loved Facebook. But I can’t stay silent about what’s happening. – January 17, 2019
For years, Facebook gave other tech firms more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed – December 19, 2018
Apple runs huge billboard touting privacy outside CES show in Las Vegas – January 7, 2019
Senator Marco Rubio introduces privacy bill to create federal regulations on data collection – January 16, 2019
Apple endorses comprehensive privacy legislation in U.S. Senate testimony – September 26, 2018
Trump administration working on federal data privacy policy – July 27, 2018

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]