Apple to Expand Digital Advertising Network to Third-Party Apps

The line between Android and Apple gets blurrier.

I don’t want ads Tim. That’s why I paid the premium over an Android.

A bit of a nit pick. That is Apple's privacy page. That's marketing. That is not their privacy policy. Some people think they are the same. They are not. Apple's privacy policy is linked in the upper right hand corner of that page.

Of course it's marketing. That's my point. It's a promise they make to their customers.

That bold portion of your comment. That's Apple's infamous marketing misdirect. None of them (Google, Apple, MS, etc) sell your personal information to advertisers. But by saying they don't specifically, the implication is made that the others do.

Be that as it may, Apple has always made a point that they are different from Google, Facebook etc. due to their business model. For example, here is a quote from a recent Tim Cook interview ('https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/apple-ceo-tim-cook-slams-facebook-privacy-human-right-it-n860816'):

<begin quote>
When asked what he would do if he were in Zuckerberg's position, Cook replied: "What would I do? I wouldn't be in this situation."
"The truth is we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer, if our customer was our product," Cook said. "We’ve elected not to do that."
<end quote>

If the WSJ report is correct that they are expanding their (currently very limited) targeted advertising business, that is obviously no longer true, and they should be called out for it.

This is a quote from Apple's privacy page ('https://www.apple.com/privacy/'):

"Your personal data belongs to you, not others.
Whether you’re taking a photo, asking Siri a question, or getting directions, you can do it knowing that Apple doesn’t gather your personal information to sell to advertisers or other organizations."

Guess that didn't last long.

A bit of a nit pick. That is Apple's privacy page. That's marketing. That is not their privacy policy. Some people think they are the same. They are not. Apple's privacy policy is linked in the upper right hand corner of that page.

That bold portion of your comment. That's Apple's infamous marketing misdirect. None of them (Google, Apple, MS, etc) sell your personal information to advertisers. But by saying they don't specifically, the implication is made that the others do.

God, I wish people would grow up a bit, and get over the fact that advertising makes the internet (world?) go around.

I never click on Internet ads, and I'm happy to pay a fee for services that I like.

Yes, they know anonymised info about you and yours. No, they don't sell your specific personal info (they're not legally entitled to; see how GDPR has clarified how companies must handle this).

GDPR is an EU law. Companies are under no obligation to adopt GDPR compliant policies for people in other parts of the world. Here in the US they can pretty much do what they want with your data.

Now move on to more important things to worry about.

Incidents such as Cambridge Analytica or the leaking of realtime location information by mobile carriers should have made it glaringly obvious even to the most obstinate apologists that data privacy is not a trivial matter.

If people actually looked at the privacy policies of Apple vs Google, you'd find that Google is far more transparent on what exactly is done with the information gathered about you and you have more control over it than Apple. That's fact.

It's my opinion that Apple plays this (we don't sell your data, we're not FB, etc...) up into overdrive to justify the "walled garden" to the consumer. If you're concerned about nefarious apps as a reason to not like android, why are you on the internet? It's just as "wild west".

This is a quote from Apple's privacy page ('https://www.apple.com/privacy/'):

"Your personal data belongs to you, not others.
Whether you’re taking a photo, asking Siri a question, or getting directions, you can do it knowing that Apple doesn’t gather your personal information to sell to advertisers or other organizations."

Guess that didn't last long.