Apple and Your Personal Information
by Miki Saxon
“You can make money without doing evil” is number 6 in Google’s 10 point corporate philosophy, but ‘evil’ is a fluid term.
Obviously, invading your privacy and stalking you on and off-line in the name of targeted marketing, AKA, making money, doesn’t count.
Mark Zukerberg of Facebook exhorts you to share everything in your life at the same time he bought all three residences surrounding his home (last paragraph) to assure his own privacy.
Many social sites now track your location and make it public.
93% want control of their personal information, but are resigned that it isn’t going to happen.
Once again, Apple is flying in the face of its tech brethren.
“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.” (…)
“We don’t think you should ever have to trade it for a service you think is free but actually comes at a very high cost. This is especially true now that we’re storing data about our health, our finances and our homes on our devices.”
“We believe the customer should be in control of their own information. You might like these so-called free services, but we don’t think they’re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose. And we think some day, customers will see this for what it is.” –Apple CEO Tim Cook, honored for ‘corporate leadership’ during EPIC’s Champions of Freedom event in Washington.
So the next time you sign in to Facebook, Google, Square, Twitter, etc., keep in mind that they aren’t selling their souls to make a buck, they are selling yours, your family’s and your friends’.
Flickr image credit: westonhighschool library
