“Here’s Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and his description of how Apple can be differentiated from other technology giants: ‘When an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product,'” Kate MacKenzie writes for PixoBebo. “Obviously, Cook’s statement was aimed at the likes of Google, Facebook, and to a lesser extent Amazon, but the clarity is pure Apple.”
“Apple has hundreds of millions of customers and works diligently to satisfy their needs. Google and Facebook’s customers are advertisers,” MacKenzie writes. “Though financially successful, there’s an obvious misalignment going on; a strange conflation of user, customer, and product, sufficient that executives from Google, Facebook, and Amazon don’t want you to know about, and will defend any attempts to publicize it, up to and including the spread of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).”
“Modern technology giants, in this case Google, Facebook, and to a slightly lesser extent, Amazon, have disrupted the once clear differentiation between users, customers, and products,” MacKenzie writes. “In other words, Google, Facebook, and Amazon are becoming more creepy.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The information that some people give to Facebook is nothing short of stupefying.
MacDailyNews Take: On September 18th, Apple CEO Tim Cook has posted an open letter on Apple.com. Here it is, verbatim:
At Apple, your trust means everything to us. That’s why we respect your privacy and protect it with strong encryption, plus strict policies that govern how all data is handled.
Security and privacy are fundamental to the design of all our hardware, software, and services, including iCloud and new services like Apple Pay. And we continue to make improvements. Two-step verification, which we encourage all our customers to use, in addition to protecting your Apple ID account information, now also protects all of the data you store and keep up to date with iCloud.
We believe in telling you up front exactly what’s going to happen to your personal information and asking for your permission before you share it with us. And if you change your mind later, we make it easy to stop sharing with us. Every Apple product is designed around those principles. When we do ask to use your data, it’s to provide you with a better user experience.
We’re publishing this website to explain how we handle your personal information, what we do and don’t collect, and why. We’re going to make sure you get updates here about privacy at Apple at least once a year and whenever there are significant changes to our policies.
A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product. But at Apple, we believe a great customer experience shouldn’t come at the expense of your privacy.
Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don’t “monetize” the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.
One very small part of our business does serve advertisers, and that’s iAd. We built an advertising network because some app developers depend on that business model, and we want to support them as well as a free iTunes Radio service. iAd sticks to the same privacy policy that applies to every other Apple product. It doesn’t get data from Health and HomeKit, Maps, Siri, iMessage, your call history, or any iCloud service like Contacts or Mail, and you can always just opt out altogether.
Finally, I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.
Our commitment to protecting your privacy comes from a deep respect for our customers. We know that your trust doesn’t come easy. That’s why we have and always will work as hard as we can to earn and keep it.
Tim
Apple’s “Privacy” webpages are here.
Related articles:
Facebook’s Zuckerberg slams Apple CEO Tim Cook over ‘ridiculous’ comments about customers – December 5, 2014
Seeking personal data, Walmart, Best Buy, and others won’t let shoppers enjoy Apple Pay privacy – October 27, 2014
Edward Snowden’s privacy tips: ‘Get rid of Dropbox,” avoid Facebook and Google – October 13, 2014
Apple thinks different about privacy – September 23, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook ups privacy to new level, takes direct swipe at Google – September 18, 2014
A message from Tim Cook about Apple’s commitment to your privacy – September 18, 2014