Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
APPLE CEO TIM Cook is not too happy about how big Silicon Valley tech companies are using your personal information, reports The Verge.
In a speech delivered remotely to a dinner in Washington, DC hosted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, where he was being honored as a “champion of freedom,” Cook said:
“Our privacy is being attacked on multiple fronts. I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”
Cook doesn’t mention them by name, but it’s pretty obvious who he’s talking about — companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, which collect user data to help target advertisements more effectively.
Cook also touched on on the trade-offs between free Web services (like Gmail) that you get from these companies in exchange for your personal information:
You might like these so-called free services, but we don’t think they’re worth having your email or your search history or now even your family photos data-mined and sold off for God knows what advertising purpose. And we think someday, customers will see this for what it is.
Cook also spoke against government backdoors into people’s personal devices. ”If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it too,” Cook said.
As Google and Facebook build out artificial intelligence laboratories that can automatically sift huge amounts of our personal data, including photos and videos, Apple has a choice to make.
Should Apple invest more heavily in collecting data, with the result of a more personal experience for users at the probable cost of trust and privacy? Or does Apple stick to its guns and let Google pull way ahead in this one area?
Judging from this speech, and from the other remarks he’s given in support of online privacy, it sounds like Cook has made his decision.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
He didn’t mention the name of any company so why is Google and Facebook in the headline?
A dodgy solicitors letter would sort that out in no time at all.
Apple and Google are in competition for IDA grants. They got 25 Million euro between them so perhaps one got more than the other.
A bit rich coming from apple, oh I forgot, they charge you for your information so that makes it alright.
Yep, and have left themselves open to hackers moreso than the other two, meaning you effectively pay for your information to be stored on a dodgy service.
he may well be speaking out of both sides of his mouth on this one. siri for example captures your voice ands and sends them back for analysing to the US. I am pretty sure that facetime and some of the other Apple products are open to whatever Apple want to do with them.
Ha! This from Apple! The WORST company in the world for not protecting users privacy!
Well if they are using the data to target advertising how come the ads are always about penis enlargement and me hung like a horses
Horses
I think he forgot they do it too: http://advertising.apple.com/
Settings->Privacy->Advertising.
Turn on Limit Ad Tracking.
Then reset the advertising identifier.
Sorted.
Let me know when you find out how to do this using Google’s services.
Turn off phone, dip it in hydrochloric acid, burn clothes, move to underground ice cavern in Antarctica.
Google free then!
Until the day the Google Maps van pulls up outside your cave, maybe.
I thought most people were aware of this…?
With regards to Google and Twitter, you are asked if these companies can use your info.
And by that you mean you have the choice between letting them use your personal info, or not using their service.
Unfortunately even that isn’t actually the case. When you send an email to a user of gmail, even if not on gmail yourself, Google’s algorithms profile you by scanning the content of that email.
Let’s not forget they were also caught wardriving with their Streetview vans – mapping out people’s wifi networks as they drove past.
Off with his head. …..soooooooon enough.
Pot and kettle comes to mind
have your say