Earlier this January, Apple trolled Google and Amazon with an ad saying “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.” Apple also added a link to apple.com/privacy to underline the Cupertino-based company’s privacy advantage over its top competitors.
But Vlad Savov points out that there some holes in Apple’s claims in this article in The Verge:
Apple isn’t wrong to tout its privacy advantage. Amazon’s Alexa has had embarrassing failures on this front: first by recording a private conversation and sending it to a different user, and then by mistakenly sending a user 1,700 voice recordings from another. As to Google Assistant and Android — the primary / only rival to the iPhone — there have been numerous privacy infractions from Android device makers surreptitiously tracking user information (hello, OnePlus and Blu), and Google’s own business model is predicated on exploiting user data for commercial gain. Apple can afford to be more noble because it sells hardware rather than ads.
Though Apple’s privacy may be superior to its rivals, it’s not without fault. iPhone users in China, for instance, are far less protected from state snooping than their US counterparts. And Apple’s tardiness in implementing two-factor authentication likely contributed to high-profile iCloud accounts being compromised in the infamous Celebgate photo leak. If Apple wants to live up to the full meaning of the words it has emblazoned on the side of a building this week, it ought to ensure its privacy protections are impenetrable and apply with equal strength everywhere across the world. Otherwise, this might all look a bit hypocritical.
