Apple launched a new advertising campaign aimed at raising consumer awareness on the subject of privacy, tracking and the threat of data intermediaries, an important problem but often not well understood by users. This campaign will arrive in Europe and around the world over the next few days.
“The next sale is a digital treasure: the private data of the lovely Ellie” is the title of the new spot in which the protagonist Ellie, while choosing records in a shop, finds herself attending an auction in which they are sold … her data: emails, transactions, browsing and position history, contacts , messages exchanged and information on purchases made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UyBGbf2s54
Arriving at the final lot, the one that will not make everyone present at the auction “disappointed”, Ellie activates the functions Tracking Transparency App And Privacy protection in Mail on his iPhone which, all of a sudden, they pulverize everything.
A commercial, as usually well done, which underlines how important our data is and how it is necessary to try to avoid that it can be easily shared with third-party apps, without any possibility of control. Apple has always made privacy one of its strengths, implementing functions that have often also encountered conflicts from antitrust authorities who fear they could be anti-competitive.
Tracking Transparency App allows you to choose whether an app can track user activities in the apps and websites of other companies for advertising purposes or for sharing with data intermediaries.
With iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, and tvOS 14.5, apps must request permission before tracking your activities on other companies’ apps and websites. Tracking occurs when information that identifies you or your device collected by an app is linked to information that identifies you or your device collected by third-party owned apps, websites or other platforms for purposes related to sending. of personalized ads or advertising measurement, or when the information collected is shared with data brokers.
Privacy protection in Mail on Mac, iPhone and iPad prevents email senders from knowing user information, such as when and how many times an email is viewed, if it is forwarded, IP address and other data.
In addition to these two functions, however, there are also others that can prevent us from forwarding information about our activities to third parties. With Apple Pay, for example, Apple doesn’t keep track of what is purchased and therefore cannot build a purchase history to serve the user with advertisements. In addition, Apple does not store or access the original credit, debit or prepaid card numbers that are added to Apple Pay.
As for the position data, thanks to Location Services you can choose whether to allow an app to access your location once or every time you use it. You can also choose whether apps can see the approximate location (within an area of ​​approximately 16 square km) rather than the user’s exact location. Likewise, it is possible prevent third-party apps from accessing our contacts.
With regard to the browsing history, however, thanks to Intelligent Tracking Prevention in Safari, trackers are blocked to prevent them from following you on the web. Smart Tracking Prevention is on by default. The app’s “Privacy Report” provides information on how often apps access a user’s location, photos, camera, microphone, and contacts over a seven-day period.
The video also refers to the messages exchanged. With watchOS, iOS and iPadOS user messages are encrypted on the device, so that it cannot be accessed without the access code. iMessage and FaceTime are designed so that neither Apple nor anyone else can read the messages when they are in transit between devices.
