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If you've been paying attention to Apple over the past year, you're probably not surprised to see her touting her true privacy at the annual developer conference on Monday, or seeing her cheerfully cheating on chess. other technology companies.
Privacy has been a smart strategy for Apple in recent times, in tune with the hardware vendor's own push in Internet services and the public outcry over the poor privacy record of Google and Facebook.
"We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right," said Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple. It featured a new app connection feature designed specifically to prevent Facebook and Google from tracking the movements of iPhone users across their various apps.
Just as Apple preached to its audience, a Reuters report swept through the latest developments in the federal government's efforts to toughen the regulation of Big Tech companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple.
The timing was purely fortuitous, but it highlighted a development likely to thwart Apple's choice weapon against rivals and, if Apple does not pay attention, it could turn against Apple itself . By limiting access to user data, Apple may irritate not only Google and Facebook, but also the thousands of small developers who create applications for its devices. This decision could also inadvertently create the impression that Apple is countering competition and must be controlled.
Apple expands its crusade in matters of privacy
Apple has been advocating for privacy for years, using its privacy image to differentiate itself from other leading technology companies, particularly Facebook and Google.
To the credit of Apple, it is only public relations. The company has regularly added features to its devices and services designed to make them more secure and to help users protect their personal information. Its products have built-in features that encrypt the data stored in it and the messages that are sent to it. Some of its artificial intelligence features have been designed to analyze user device information rather than cloud servers to protect their sensitive data. And he took steps to anonymize the data sent to his servers in order to make it more difficult to identify individual users.
At the Apple Developer Conference, company officials made it clear that they were even more interested in protecting privacy. Among the things announced are:
- A new app for Apple Watch called Cycle Tracking is designed to allow women to keep an eye on their menstrual cycles. As with other Apple health apps, users decide whether or not they want to share their data. The announcement of the new application follows a report that a similar third-party application, Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker from Flo Health, shared information about user cycles with Facebook.
- A new feature of HomeKit, Apple's smart home technology, which will require security cameras to analyze video on users' own devices. Today, many services send such data, which may include video at the consumer, up to the cloud services to be processed.
- Another new feature of HomeKit designed for home routers. This feature delineates smart home devices connected to these routers, which will prevent them from being used to access another part of the network. There is growing concern about the security of smart devices, and several notable incidents have allowed hackers to take control of groups of these gadgets.
- A new privacy setting in iOS, the underlying operating system of the iPhone, allows users to allow applications to access their location "one-time". This move would force applications to seek user approval whenever they want to know their location. Previously, users had more limited options to control access to their location.
- A new feature that will prevent applications from trying to circumvent these privacy limitations by using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios on their phones to search for nearby transmitters. Last year, a report explained how F acebook used this data to determine the location of users, even if they had chosen it in their settings to prevent its application from knowing their location.
- A new "Connect with Apple" option for apps. This feature is designed to be an alternative to the commonly used alternatives of Facebook and Google. Unlike these systems, Apple would not be used to track users from one application to the other. In addition, Apple would allow users to configure single-use email addresses associated with the connection to further protect their privacy.
New features may have a mixed reaction
Many consumers are likely to cheer such features. There is growing concern about the amount of data collected by Facebook, Google, and other large technology companies, but also how that data is being used. Facebook, for example, faces a multi-billion dollar fine for the leakage of user data to the Trump-related data company, Cambridge Analytica, last year. And the two companies were reprimanded for using the data they have on consumers and their online business and for manipulating that information to use it to spend more time with the company's services.
But as much as consumers will appreciate such features, developers can hate them. Technology companies typically collect information about the location of users and their online habits in order to target them more precisely with advertisements. Facebook and Google are the main players in digital advertising, but they are far from the only ones. And in many cases, app developers team up with Facebook and Google and share both data collection and advertising money.
Allowing consumers to limit position tracking or tracking between apps can in turn reduce the ad revenue generated by these ads. This could cause some developers to abandon iOS or charge for their apps and services rather than offer them as advertising-funded. In addition, fewer global applications or less ad-supported ads could make the iPhone less attractive to end users.
But Apple's ads run other risks for the company. The Cycle Tracking application targets a whole class of apps that have been developed to allow users to track their menstrual cycles. The move is only the last time the company launched a service that offers a feature that many users had previously obtained from a third-party application. As in the past, the Apple application will benefit from preferential treatment under iOS; Unlike the trackers of the time, Apple will be integrated into its Health app on iPhone.
Apple is under the spotlight of increased surveillance
The announcement comes as Apple is already drawing a scourge for such practices. Spotify complained to the competition authorities of the European Union that Apple had given its Apple music service unfair advantages over the Spotify service. At the same time, Senator Elizabeth Warren, highlighting such complaints, claimed that Apple should not be able to operate an app store for third party developers and offer competing applications from those of his store.
Read it: Spotify just painted a big target on Apple's back, and the iPhone maker should be concerned if antitrust regulators start to target it
But Apple could face the biggest problem with its new connection service. It is assumed that any application offering third-party login functionality would also offer Apple's login service.
This requirement appears to be a good example of what is known as tied selling: a dominant company requires partners who want to use one service or feature to use another. Linking its Internet Explorer browser to Windows is what led Microsoft to problems with antitrust authorities 20 years ago. Linking Google search and other apps to Google Play and Android is what has recently caused Google's problems with the European Union and resulted in a $ 5 billion fine.
The news of this requirement was announced the same day as reports that US antitrust authorities are beginning to interest Apple. The company may regret this moment.
The problem for Apple is that even though people are more and more concerned about privacy, they worry more and more about the power of big tech companies. While this obviously serves to protect the interests of consumers, this will be the subject of close scrutiny. And maybe penalized too.
That is why Apple's position in favor of privacy protection could soon prove to be painful.
Do you have any advice about Apple or the technology sector? Contact this reporter by e-mail at [email protected], send him a message on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message via Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.
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