According to a survey commissioned by cryptographic solutions vendor nCipher, 89% of respondents agreed that encryption is important. No great surprise there then. To get to the surprising statistics, you have to dig deeper into the results: when it comes to data encryption, Apple is not trusted as much as Google. Or Amazon as far as those in the U.S. are concerned.
Say what? Is this the same Google that recently confirmed that its camera app was vulnerable to remote attacker takeover to spy on the user? The same Google that recently confirmed a critical vulnerability that could lead to permanent denial of service for Android users? Yep, but remember that this survey wasn’t asking about trust in the broader security sense; it was more narrowly focused on encrypting data…
Data privacy needs to be higher on the technical agenda everywhere, and those companies under the brightest of media spotlights need to be better at getting the “we take the security of your data seriously” message across.
MacDailyNews Take: Based on this survey result, the ramifications of widespread pot legalization across the U.S. are now readily apparent.
While being right nearly all the time is a heavy cross to bear, we gladly carry this burden for you, as always:
Apple should be running a massive ad campaign that clearly explains how they stand apart from virtually every other major Silicon Valley company when it come to privacy and monetizing users. Every time there is a breach or an abuse at Facebook, Google, etc. Apple should be ready to pound their privacy message into the general public’s exceedingly thick collective skull. — MacDailyNews, April 10, 2018
Apple needs to continue to relentlessly point out how FaceBook and Google make their money: By vacuuming up your personal data and selling it to the highest bidder. – MacDailyNews, June 5, 2017
It’s not at all apparent that the general public values their privacy enough or even knows that Apple’s privacy is paramount, but the average Joe/Jane does seem to regard Siri as not too bright, putting into question whether Apple’s commitment to privacy will every really pay off; i.e. translate to increased product sales.
Apple product users seem to value their privacy. Non-Apple product users, by definition, do not value their privacy (or they’d be Apple product users).
So, what’s the inflection point? Do Google and the others need to have an Equifax event befall it for their product users to wake up? Would they even wake up if Google etc. did have a cataclysmic breach? We have our doubts. — MacDailyNews, October 5, 2017
Until we see everyday people wake up about privacy, we’ll continue to believe that Apple is serving a niche market of those relative few who recognize the need for and desire the type of stringent privacy protections that Apple offers (outside of China). — MacDailyNews, March 21, 2018
It’s amazing that privacy champion Apple continually gets lumped in with the likes of privacy-trampling Google and Facebook. It’s also illustrative of Apple’s failure to get their privacy message out to the great unwashed. MacDailyNews, December 17, 2019