Daniel Eran DilgerThe change supports Apple's existing privacy policy, which was being violated by developers, perhaps unintentionally, when they included ad network code into their apps, which subsequently began to forward private data about the device and the user's location to a third party network.
The change was triggered by reports published by Flurry Analytics, which harvested the data and found evidence of unreleased devices on Apple's campus, which it subsequently published on its website.
Jobs was noticeably agitated about Flurry's ability to remotely monitor devices within Apple's campus, noting that "we were really naive about this stuff," and explaining that the company first discovered the collection of privately identifying information was going on after reading about Flurry's reports of unreleased new iPhones and other tablet devices in the news.
"It's violating every rule in our privacy policy," Jobs boomed. "We went through the roof about this. So we said: No, we're not going to allow this. It's violating our privacy policies and its pissing us off that they're publishing data about our new products.
"So we said we are only going to allow these analytics that don't give device information and therefore are solely for the purpose of advertising," Jobs said. "We're not going to be the only advertiser. There's others, and we're not banning other advertisers from our platforms.
"They can do that. But they can't send data out to an analytics firm who is going to sell it to make money and publish it to tell everybody that we have devices on our campus that we don't want people to know about. That," Jobs said, "we don't need to do."
Jobs acknowledged that there are legitimate uses of data analysis by app developers, if users are appropriately appraised of the fact that their data is being shared. "After we calm down, we're willing to talk to some of these analytics firms," Jobs said. "But it's not today."
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48 Comments
Perhaps all the hyperbolic blog sites can take off their tinfoil hats and publish retractions for all the paranoia?
It will never happen.
If anyone else has a gripe they've got deeper issues that go beyond analytics, in their life.
how about adding real privacy to browsers? I am tired of getting spam to everyone of my email accounts - when I know for a fact that I did not give anyone permission to use my email for that purpose - and even my son's email - which I do not use for posting on forms or anything - gets spam - and the only place I can think of that it is coming from is some ad on some browser is asking my system to provide an email address. I suppose I should use something like little snitch but that is too far in the other extreme.
Any software that is going to send any information to anyone - especially if it is not on the screen where you can see it and type it in yourself - should have some sort of alert with opt out or block feature. For example if I navigate to appleinsider.com and the browser is polled for user info from ad.revolver.com (or whatever) there should be no automatic response without explicit user acceptance of the information exchange.
GOOD!
Apple has been totally LACKING on users privacy for many years now.
I'm glad they got burnt, perhaps they will think how we feel when they make devices that just let it announce anything on it to anyone.What Apple needs to do is a lot of 'What if' scenarios to protect users data and privacy and practice more compartmentalization techniques.
Apple has been totally LACKING on users privacy for many years now.
Care to explain what that's based on - other than your paranoid fantasies?
Look at Apple's privacy policy compared to Google or Facebook. Apple is one of the best in the industry when it comes to privacy.
Except the question of competition hinges on what advantage Apple is reserving for itself. It's nice that they won't let other firms collect data. But it's uncompetitive and hypocritical if they are doing it themselves. What I'd like to know is what data is Apple collecting from iAds? After all, nobody else has gone so far as to bake an ad platform into the OS.