Apple debuts new privacy ad highlighting how iPhone fights data brokers

Apple has a new advertisement and campaign highlighting how its privacy features can help stop third parties and data brokers from using or selling your information.

In the minute and a half ad, a young iPhone user named Ellie discovers a secret world of data brokers and other companies who are happily buying and selling her private data and information.

Some of Ellie's data being sold include her emails, her drugstore purchases, her contact information, and her browsing history. Those are all information types commonly collected by data harvesters.

However, in the ad, Ellie uses some of Apple's privacy-focused features to fight back. That includes using App Tracking Transparency to stop apps from tracking her across other websites and apps, and using Mail Privacy Protection to stop companies from using invisible tracking pixels to gather information on her email reading habits.

"iPhone has privacy features like App Tracking Transparency and Mail Privacy Protection that help you control who sees your data and who doesn't," Apple wrote of the ad.

Some of Apple's other built-in features also fight dat harvesting, such as the fact that iMessage is end-to-end encrypted and the fact that app permissions can control whether third-party apps get access to information like contact data.