Yes, it’s not only ‘cheap’ devices that collect data, but cheap devices are often doing this in lieu of charging more. We all know Apple is at the more luxury end of the market, with some healthy profit margins, and their PR is very skewed towards honouring privacy, yet this certainly does not apply to their actual practices.
Google makes it’s money from advertising (which involves segmenting the market for targeted ads and demonstrating results to advertisers), Facebook makes it’s money off ads in a similar manner (sometimes also supplying user data to anyone called a researcher), most free non-open source smartphone apps are paid for my displaying ads (which also read and send back user data), but when one pays as much as one does for an Apple device (who promises not to track your data if you opted out) you just don’t expect to have your data siphoned off…
The point being, whether we like it or not, we are the product and this has become the norm in practice. But when given the option to pay a premium or a subscription, and you opt out of adverts or data collection, that has to be honoured. Many deride the EU’s GDPR, but it certainly looks like they have been flying the banner better for privacy and rights than anywhere else.
“Despite Apple’s claims that the information isn’t identifiable, that data is transmitted with a permanent ID number tied to iCloud accounts, which links the data to your name, email address and phone number.”
I suppose, at least with open source, you have a better chance of seeing what is actually going on behind the scenes with the software you are using…
See https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-privacy-analytics-second-lawsuit-1849967188
#technology #privacy #Apple #optout