This was published 6 years ago
Opinion
Dear Apple, while we’re talking about creepy data collection …
Conal Hanna
Audience and Innovation EditorOn Wednesday morning I got in my car to drive to work. As I turned the key in the ignition the radio news was documenting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to US Congress about data breaches that have happened on the company’s watch.
Last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook engaged in a bit of Silicon Valley schadenfreude when he questioned Facebook’s approach to personal data.
The notification that got my attention.
“Privacy to us is a human right. It’s a civil liberty,” Mr Cook declared, just a tad sanctimoniously, in an interview aired in the US this week.
But as I put the car into neutral in the driveway to get out and close the garage door (my beeper is broken) what I saw next made me think tech CEOs in glass houses should probably refrain from throwing stones.
Now I don’t use Apple maps. I’m a creature of habit and never quite got over those stories about Apple’s dubious launch of maps in Australia. So when I need directions, I use Google Maps.
But Apple Maps remained on my phone, surviving numerous app purges, for one reason: I thought I couldn’t delete it. (Turns out I was wrong - you can’t delete Apple’s Health, Wallet and Photos apps, but you can delete the pre-installed Maps app).
But even though it survived on my phone, it sat on the fourth screen as you swiped right from the home screen - in other words, at the furthest reaches of the phone solar system. From there, though, it clearly continued hoovering up my data in the background.
To be honest I had noticed some of these seemingly random traffic notifications before, and shaken my head at Apple’s misguided attempts to be useful. I no doubt could have done something about them but, by definition, they always arrived when I was on the move - literally in the car, about to drive somewhere. More often than not I’d only see them after I arrived at my destination.
But it was the inclusion of my three-year-old daughter’s childcare service - by name - on this notification that made me really take note.
Here is an app that I don’t use that knows not only where my daughter goes to day care, but seemingly what days she goes and roughly what time we are taking her there. (We don't normally leave that early; my wife was dropping her off this day.) I don’t know about you, but I find that creepy.
"We're not going to traffic in your personal life," Mr Cook declared. Pardon the pun.
Siri, which I also don't use, is watching.
"We've never believed that these detailed profiles of people — that has incredibly deep personal information that is patched together from several sources — should exist."
I'm glad you feel that way Tim. But consider my surprise when trying to establish exactly how Apple was gleaning my childcare centre visitation habits. Under my Maps settings, was the line "Siri can suggest locations based on your Safari and app usage." That to me sounds suspiciously like stitching together a data profile of somebody.
Since the original publication of this story, Apple has contacted me to clarify that the 'Significant Locations' service involves data that is encrypted to be read on my devices only, and can't be shared without my consent. The company also stressed that the data is anonymised so not able to be used to stitch together a profile of an individual in any way. Both of these things are reassuring, but only up to a point.
I’m not paranoid enough to think Apple is using this data for nefarious Big Brother purposes. I think they’re attempting to be useful with this traffic service - even though for me it never has been. But this data clearly could be used for improper purposes. And permission for its collection definitely wasn’t explicitly sought.
So is my child's daycare centre name deleted or not?
As always, it’s the default settings that make the difference. If I had needed to turn this feature on (and I'm talking here about the specific 'Significant Locations' service, rather than the all-encompassing 'Location Services'), rather than turn it off, I never would have given permission.
And that’s where all the big tech companies - Apple, Facebook, Google and others - could make it quite simple. If the default for all of their features was off, and then every time you turned one on it told you specifically what data that feature would allow them to collect, and how it would be used, that would be a far more satisfying customer experience than some unwieldy fine print ‘T&Cs’ checkbox.
That would be quite easy for them to do. But the tech companies know discovery is about getting people to try things. Most of us are quite inert, so they are constantly looking for ways to put new features under our noses, and the default is almost always ‘on’. The charitable way of looking at this is they’re trying to make users aware of new possibilities in our fast-changing tech landscape. The more cynical view is that it’s about trying to get people hooked on new features before they’ve even stopped to consider what they’re giving up in exchange.
Mr Cook's ultimate point was that Apple was not trying to monetise its user data in the way that Facebook does. It's not all about trying to monetise the data, though. It's about these companies' seemingly endless desire to integrate themselves totally into our lives. That's what I am finding disconcerting and, increasingly, unacceptable, and I think society is too.
It’s about time users were put in the driver’s seat.
In a response to this article, Apple also said that the company's latest iOS upgrade 11.3 includes a new privacy icon and detailed privacy information will appear whenever Apple asks for access to personal information to enable features, secure Apple services or personalise an iOS experience. Which sounds like a step in the direction I was hoping for.