Google tracks 39 types of personal data, Apple tracks 12

New research claims that of five major Big Tech firms, Google tracks more private data about users than any other — and Apple tracks the least.

Apple has previously introduced App Tracking Transparency specifically to protect the privacy of users from other companies. However, a new report says that Apple is also avoiding doing any more tracking itself than is needed to run its services.

According to StockApps.com, Apple "is the most privacy-conscious firm out there."

"Apple only stores the information that is necessary to maintain users' accounts," it continues. "This is because their website is not as reliant on advertising revenue as are Google, Twitter, and Facebook."

The StockApps.com report does not list what it describes as the "data points" that Big Tech firms collect for every user. However, it says they include location details, browser history, activity on third-party websites, and in Google's case, also emails in Gmail.

It also doesn't detail its methodology, but does say that it used marketing firm digitalinformationworld to investigate Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

Via StockApps.com

Of these five, Google reportedly tracks 39 separate data points per user, while Apple tracks only 12. Unexpectedly, Facebook is stated as tracking only 14 data points, while Amazon tracks 23, and Twitter tracks 24.

"Most people do not have the time or patience to read privacy policies that can be several pages long for each website they visit," said StockApps.com's Edith Reads. "As a result, users end up allowing Google to harvest all the data they need by agreeing to the privacy policy terms."

Separately, the Australian government recently fined Google $40 million over location tracking on Android.

8 Comments

Paul_B 82 comments · 2 Years

About 2 years ago

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) tracks ALL of your data, because they built the infrastructure that every company uses. Who really cares - Seriously

genovelle 1481 comments · 16 Years

Paul_B said:

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) tracks ALL of your data, because they built the infrastructure that every company uses. Who really cares - Seriously

I do. Just because you use their servers doesn’t mean they are tracking you. There is a distinct difference and it relates to building a personal profile of your actives and storing it to give access to their paying clients.

You use Apple servers if you own their devices, but they purposely limit the data maintained on them for privacy but also security. The more information retained, the harder it is to secure it and makes a much bigger “Target” 🎯.

spheric 2705 comments · 9 Years

Paul_B said:

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) tracks ALL of your data, because they built the infrastructure that every company uses. Who really cares - Seriously

Over here, ISPs are required to record metadata (IP addresses, timestamps, SMS addressees, etc.) for law enforcement purposes, but are expressly forbidden to store and analyse actual data.

bobolicious 1177 comments · 10 Years

...and the Apple user accounts are 'necessary' because... Apple chose to move from physical media to an app store that tracks everything that a user installs and updates...? Apple ID Devices Info lists the OS on every device as well as IMEI, phone number, and 'unsupported' macOS installs...

I recently used recovery and it reformatted a drive from HFS+ to APFS without so much as a warning, although presumably this was indicated in the small print that 'people do not have the time or patience to read'... This made Diskwarrior unusable, along with other issues still in progress...

jeff fields 161 comments · 12 Years

Paul_B said:

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) tracks ALL of your data, because they built the infrastructure that every company uses. Who really cares - Seriously

First of all, this isn't true and reveals a lot of ignorance. Second, a lot of people care, and it's not really your job to speculate about who cares and who does not. This is a serious issue.