Is Apple Really Your Privacy Hero?

The world’s most valuable company is seen as a champion for your data. That accolade is undeserved.

- Sarah Frier

Apple Inc. has positioned itself as the champion of privacy. Even as Facebook Inc. and Google track our moves around the internet for advertisers’ benefit, Apple has trumpeted its noble decision to avoid that business model. When Facebook became embroiled in a scandal over data leaked by an app developer, Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said he wouldn’t ever be in such a situation. He framed Apple’s stance as a moral one. Privacy is a human right, he said. “We never move off of our values,” he told NPR in June.

The campaign is working, as evidenced by media reports depicting Apple as hero to Facebook’s villain. But that marketing coup masks an underlying problem: The world’s most valuable company—its market value crossed the $1 trillion mark on Aug. 2—has some of the same security problems as the other tech giants when it comes to apps. It has, in effect, abdicated responsibility for possible misuse of data, leaving it in the hands of the independent developers who create the products available in its App Store.

Bloomberg News recently reported that for years iPhone app developers have been allowed to store and sell data from users who allow access to their contact lists, which, in addition to phone numbers, may include other people’s photos and home addresses. According to some security experts, the Notes section—where people sometimes list Social Security numbers for their spouses or children or the entry codes for their apartment buildings—is particularly sensitive. In July, Apple added a rule to its contract with app makers banning the storage and sale of such data. It was done with little fanfare, probably because it won’t make much of a difference.