Teenage shaving queries used to promote Safari privacy in latest iPhone privacy ad

Apple is continuing its "Privacy. That's iPhone" marketing campaign by publishing a new video to its YouTube channel, highlighting the anti-tracking measures of Safari to prevent advertisers from knowing what users are searching for online.

The latest ad, titled "The Answer," focuses on one teenager in a bathroom looking at his mustache into a mirror. Browsing on an iPhone XR, his internal monolog muses "All these websites say it's normal to start shaving at age 15," suggesting the kind of thing that internet users may not want to share with others.

The teenager then places the iPhone XR down on a towel in a cut-away shot, to the background sound of an electric trimmer.

On-screen text in the ad states "Safari limits sites from tracking you across the web. Because what you browse should be your business. Privacy. That's iPhone." The last section of the ad spot is the Apple logo with a padlock loop closing and snapping shut.

Below the video, the description includes a link to the Apple Privacy minisite, which goes into detail about Apple's position on privacy and security, and how its ecosystem is built with those policies in mind.

The video carries on from one released on March 14, which jabs at steps people take in day-to-day life to protect their privacy.

15 Comments

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

About 5 years ago

What the hell? This is a creepy. I think Apple’s making a mistake here.

fastasleep 6451 comments · 14 Years

Yet that kid Googled the question which went through his ISP’s DNS servers, so he’s fucked.

What if Apple built its own always-on VPN that anonymized every user on every device?

gatorguy 24627 comments · 13 Years

fastasleep said:

Yet that kid Googled the question which went through his ISP’s DNS servers, so he’s fucked.

What if Apple built its own always-on VPN that anonymized every user on every device?

Oddly the company "we" love to hate here also offers a VPN of their own, isn't tied to an account or phone number, uses no other identifiers either, isn't stored, and encrypted in a way that cannot be read by that company, anonymized even to themselves. Who knew?

@fastasleep

Edit: Meant to add the link, otherwise it was incomplete. Sorry....
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/google-adds-always-on-vpn-to-its-project-fi-cellular-service/

gatorguy said:

@fastasleep
Edit: Meant to add the link, otherwise it was incomplete. Sorry....
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/google-adds-always-on-vpn-to-its-project-fi-cellular-service/

Great. You couldn't pay me to use Google's services. My guess is they use their DNS and fingerprint you, even if it's not tied to your account directly by "your Google account or phone number".