Thursday is Data Privacy Day and Apple is marking the occasion in a few ways, including sharing a new “A Day in the Life of Your Data” document that details how third parties can track user data on websites and applications.
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Apple says that, on average, mobile apps include six “trackers” from third-party companies for the “sole purpose of collecting and tracking people and their personal information”, supplying an industry valued at $ 227 billion a year. “A day in the life of your data” aims to show what advertisers, data brokers, social media companies and other entities can learn about a father and daughter who spend a pleasant day at the park.
An example is the father and daughter taking a selfie in the park, editing the photo with a filter application and sharing it on social networks, a series of seemingly innocent actions that still resulted in data being collected and tracked in various applications:
Later, at the playground, John and Emma take a selfie. They play with a photo filter app, deciding to add rabbit ears to the photo. The filtering application, however, is able to access all the photos on the device and the attached metadata, instead of just the playground selfie. John posts the photo to a social media application. The app links John’s current online activity to a treasure trove of data collected by other apps, such as his demographics and shopping habits, using an email address, a phone number or an advertising identifier.
The document goes on to list several privacy features from Apple that would have given the father and daughter more transparency and control over their data, including the option to give the filter application access only to the selfie, rather than the entire photo library.
The document also highlights Apple’s four key privacy principles and provides more information about App Tracking Transparency, a privacy measure that will require applications to request permission to track users from the next iOS 14, iPadOS 14 and tvOS 14 betas. Apple says software updates will be released in early spring.
“Privacy means peace of mind, it means security and it means you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to your own data,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software engineering, said in a statement released today. “Our goal is to create technology that keeps people’s information safe and protected. We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right and our teams work every day to incorporate it into everything we do.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook will speak on data privacy today at the Brussels-based Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference. Cook is due to speak at 8:15 am Pacific time, and a live broadcast will be available on YouTube.