The "Connect with Apple" button shows how Apple is now a technology controller.

Using the Internet, it's constantly slamming at the locked doors. Do you want to watch a video? Please log in. Would you like to comment? You must remember your password. Do you want to continue reading an article? Create an account. Many of us manage these password requests using our Google and Facebook login credentials to register on other websites. If you click on "Connect with Facebook" and "Connect with Google", it's not really without friction, but it's close.

This convenience goes with a boon: users must trust Google and Facebook to protect their personal data in exchange for the information these companies get to glean from all the websites and services we use. It was also great for third-party apps, which could dispel the boredom of their users creating new accounts by simply transferring their information to Google or Facebook. Airbnb, Spotify, Tinder, Venmo, they allow you all to connect with Facebook or Google or both. The problem with this market is that when it comes to protecting the privacy of users, Facebook and Google have not always kept the end of their market. They have also used all this information to energize targeted advertising companies as more and more users find it super scary. More and more, these attractive buttons give less the impression of being useful.

If we see more of this trend, privacy will be more like a luxury for some than a right to all.

Enter Apple. At its annual developer conference on Monday, the company unveiled a new "Connect with Apple" button so that Apple device users can create new connections to websites and apps. It's the same idea as these Google and Facebook buttons, but the one of a company that is known to be much more reliable when it comes to customer data – and it focuses on privacy while other technology companies are subject to scrutiny. But Apple does not just offer a third option. Users who choose to create new accounts with Apple may also choose to use a randomly generated email address that forwards the messages to their actual inbox, while maintaining the privacy of customer information by allowing them to retain their email addresses without share them with another company. This is a smart innovation, and it's not surprising that it comes from Apple, a company that opposed the FBI after refusing to help unlock the encrypted iPhone used by a shooter during the San Bernardino attack in 2015, lest it create a dangerous precedent for privacy for the rest of its users.

If you've already paid a lot for an iPhone, you should definitely use Apple's new login feature that improves privacy. And if you're not an Apple customer, well, you can not. This is the only drawback of all the improvements made to Apple's privacy protection: they do not do anything for the majority of Internet users and smartphones who do not buy expensive Apple products. If we look more closely at this trend, where the best privacy protections are bonuses for high-end device owners, privacy will be more of a luxury for some than a right for all. This is because digital privacy in the United States is barely regulated. There is currently no general federal policy requiring companies in the technology sector not to disclose our personal information to third parties without their direct consent. As long as the conditions of service we clicked on during registration indicate that our data may end up elsewhere, technology companies are largely free to do what they want.

Take what happens to Facebook after mismanaging the data of millions of users who have been entrusted to the political data company Cambridge Analytica, which inappropriately deleted Facebook profiles not only from those who downloaded an application of personality quiz, but of all those with whom they were friends. as well. Facebook faces heavy penalties now, but only because it apparently did not follow a custom rule for Facebook after mismanaging user data years earlier. When the company is mistaken, for example by storing for hundreds of millions of user passwords in a format visible to thousands of employees, Facebook does not break the law. And when Google allows third-party applications for Gmail to read users' emails in a way that's not clear to Gmail users, as the Wall Street Journal revealed last year, all is well too – provided that the fine print of his user contract says that it could happen. There is not even a rule that forces companies to share what they have shared about us. It's hard to know how many third-party apps Google allowed to read email from its users. And once your data is available, it is no longer possible to put toothpaste back into the tube. It can be copied and shared again and again.

Apple, which pulls the reins of applications applications can access about users, is only the latest example of Apple's regulation compared to other companies. Earlier this year, Apple started Facebook's developer apps from its app store after Facebook mistakenly allowed non-employees to download an intrusive app for privacy that was not supposed to be available to the public. It is also helping to restore Apple's image to the consumer at a time when the company is beginning to attract the attention of some of its employees. his practices – especially if certain aspects of its application store are anti-competitive.

And it's not a win for all users. This is a win for iPhone users and for Apple PR, although there is no guarantee that Apple will not change its policy in the future. So, accessories to Apple to lead the industry here. But it's a business decision. Some people might switch to an iPhone. It will not protect those who do not.

Time of the future
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