Apple has been hit with a class-action lawsuit in the US accusing them of playing fast and loose with the privacy of its customers. The lawsuit [Warning: PDF], filed this month in a northern California federal district court, claims that Apple gathers data from iTunes such as purchase history and personal information, and sells it to third parties. The lawsuit goes on to claim that the data Apple sells is then combined by the marketers with information purchased from other sources to create detailed profiles on individuals that allow for extremely targeted advertising. Finally, the lawsuit alleges the Music APIs Apple includes in its developer kit can allow third-party devs to harvest similarly detailed logs of user activity for their own use, further violating the privacy of iTunes customers.
Now if any of that is true, that makes Apple’s privacy claims very hollow. Which is likely why Apple hasn’t commented on this as far as I can tell. But they really should as earlier this week, it was found that iOS apps were phoning home so to speak and transmitting your personal information. Both of these dropped out of the sky only a week before their yearly developer lovefest known as the World Wide Developer Conference which doesn’t make for good optics. Not to mention the fact that Apple has clearly bet the farm on privacy. Which means they need to make sure that they demonstrate 100% of the time that what they say on the privacy front is actually true. Thus the stakes are going to be high when it comes to this lawsuit.
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This entry was posted on May 30, 2019 at 8:32 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Apple Sued Over Alleged iTunes Data Harvesting
Apple has been hit with a class-action lawsuit in the US accusing them of playing fast and loose with the privacy of its customers. The lawsuit [Warning: PDF], filed this month in a northern California federal district court, claims that Apple gathers data from iTunes such as purchase history and personal information, and sells it to third parties. The lawsuit goes on to claim that the data Apple sells is then combined by the marketers with information purchased from other sources to create detailed profiles on individuals that allow for extremely targeted advertising. Finally, the lawsuit alleges the Music APIs Apple includes in its developer kit can allow third-party devs to harvest similarly detailed logs of user activity for their own use, further violating the privacy of iTunes customers.
Now if any of that is true, that makes Apple’s privacy claims very hollow. Which is likely why Apple hasn’t commented on this as far as I can tell. But they really should as earlier this week, it was found that iOS apps were phoning home so to speak and transmitting your personal information. Both of these dropped out of the sky only a week before their yearly developer lovefest known as the World Wide Developer Conference which doesn’t make for good optics. Not to mention the fact that Apple has clearly bet the farm on privacy. Which means they need to make sure that they demonstrate 100% of the time that what they say on the privacy front is actually true. Thus the stakes are going to be high when it comes to this lawsuit.
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This entry was posted on May 30, 2019 at 8:32 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.