Unprecedented data mining?
Uh, no. You're thinking of another company: Google. Not Apple.
Read this statement from CEO Tim Cook of Apple, made this last week:
A message from Tim Cook about Apples commitment to your privacy.At Apple, your trust means everything to us. Thats why we respect your privacy and protect it with strong encryption, plus strict policies that govern how all data is handled.
Security and privacy are fundamental to the design of all our hardware, software, and services, including iCloud and new services like Apple Pay. And we continue to make improvements. Two-step verification, which we encourage all our customers to use, in addition to protecting your Apple ID account information, now also protects all of the data you store and keep up to date with iCloud.
We believe in telling you up front exactly whats going to happen to your personal information and asking for your permission before you share it with us. And if you change your mind later, we make it easy to stop sharing with us. Every Apple product is designed around those principles. When we do ask to use your data, its to provide you with a better user experience.
Were publishing this website to explain how we handle your personal information, what we do and dont collect, and why. Were going to make sure you get updates here about privacy at Apple at least once a year and whenever there are significant changes to our policies.
A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, youre not the customer. Youre the product. But at Apple, we believe a great customer experience shouldnt come at the expense of your privacy.
Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We dont build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We dont monetize the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we dont read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.
One very small part of our business does serve advertisers, and thats iAd. We built an advertising network because some app developers depend on that business model, and we want to support them as well as a free iTunes Radio service. iAd sticks to the same privacy policy that applies to every other Apple product. It doesnt get data from Health and HomeKit, Maps, Siri, iMessage, your call history, or any iCloud service like Contacts or Mail, and you can always just opt out altogether.
Finally, I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.
Our commitment to protecting your privacy comes from a deep respect for our customers. We know that your trust doesnt come easy. Thats why we have and always will work as hard as we can to earn and keep it.
Tim