Experts: Apple collects sensitive data – even when users say no to tracking

Apple would like to appear as a more privacy-protecting alternative to other tech giants. But a recent security review suggests the iPhone maker continues to track its users — even though that feature has been turned off.

“Integrity is a basic human right. It is also one of our core values”. The words are Apple’s own, and come from the extensive part of the technology company’s website that deals with privacy protection.

“You are in control. Privacy is built in from the start”, is the message that Apple wants to drum into users. For example, it should be up to iPhone owners themselves to decide whether Apple is allowed to collect diagnostic and user information from your phone or tablet. Those who do not want it can deactivate the sharing of so-called device analysis altogether, Apple promises.

Is Apple breaking its promise to users?

Now comes new information that indicates that Apple does not live up to its promises and rhetoric. ?Cynical marketing lies? Instead, it appears that the technology company continues to collect private information even when users choose not to share that type of information. It appears in an analysis that two American security experts and app developers are behind.

Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry, who work at the software company Mysk, have reviewed what data a number of Apple’s proprietary apps, including Apple Music, Stocks and the App Store, collect.

“The level of detail is shocking”

According to Mysk and Bakry, the tracking continues in these apps, regardless of the choices iPhone owners make in terms of data sharing. The information that is collected concerns, among other things, the type of device you use (including ID number), what resolution it is on the screen, how you are connected to the internet – and what you click on in the App Store.

If you have searched for apps that concern mental illness, sexual orientation or other parts of your privacy, that information can end up with Apple even in cases where the users are not aware of it, security expert Tommy Musk points out.

• “The level of detail (on collected data, eds note) is shocking for a company like Apple”

The recent changes that Apple has made to App Store ads should raise many #privacy concerns. It seems that the #AppStore app on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple.

The review was performed on two different units. Partly an iPhone with the fresh operating system Ios 16 installed, and partly an iPhone with Ios 14.6 that Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry hacked (jailbreak in English) to acquire higher rights than users usually have. The function Transparency in app tracking, was introduced in Ios 14.5, and was thus included on the phone in question. Transparency in app tracking means that all developers must ask users for permission to track you through apps or websites.In this way, it was possible for the security experts to decrypt and analyze the data traffic that went from Apple’s own apps in the phone to the manufacturer’s servers.

On both phones, for example, the sharing of iPhone and Watch analytics data, and the function of personalized Apple ads in apps such as the App Store, Stocks and Apple News, had been disabled. The information retrieved from, for example, the stock app was then forwarded to an Apple site for analysis: https://stocks-analytics-events.apple.com/analyticseventsv2/async.

• Turning off the collection did not reduce the amount of detailed analysis data that the apps send to Apple, comments Tommy Mysk.

Apple has not commented on the data