Google Tracks 39 Types of Personal Data, Apple Tracks 12 (appleinsider.com) 68
New research claims that of five major Big Tech firms, Google tracks more private data about users than any other -- and Apple tracks the least. AppleInsider reports: Apple has previously introduced App Tracking Transparency specifically to protect the privacy of users from other companies. However, a new report says that Apple is also avoiding doing any more tracking itself than is needed to run its services. According to StockApps.com, Apple "is the most privacy-conscious firm out there." "Apple only stores the information that is necessary to maintain users' accounts," it continues. "This is because their website is not as reliant on advertising revenue as are Google, Twitter, and Facebook."
The StockApps.com report does not list what it describes as the "data points" that Big Tech firms collect for every user. However, it says they include location details, browser history, activity on third-party websites, and in Google's case, also emails in Gmail. It also doesn't detail its methodology, but does say that it used marketing firm digitalinformationworld to investigate Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Of these five, Google reportedly tracks 39 separate data points per user, while Apple tracks only 12. Unexpectedly, Facebook is stated as tracking only 14 data points, while Amazon tracks 23, and Twitter tracks 24.
The StockApps.com report does not list what it describes as the "data points" that Big Tech firms collect for every user. However, it says they include location details, browser history, activity on third-party websites, and in Google's case, also emails in Gmail. It also doesn't detail its methodology, but does say that it used marketing firm digitalinformationworld to investigate Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Of these five, Google reportedly tracks 39 separate data points per user, while Apple tracks only 12. Unexpectedly, Facebook is stated as tracking only 14 data points, while Amazon tracks 23, and Twitter tracks 24.
Good on Apple. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good on Apple. (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh, without knowing what are the 12 and what are the 39?
Re: Good on Apple. (Score:2)
Re: Good on Apple. (Score:4)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Good on Apple. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Good on Apple. (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertising/
"We may use information such as the following to assign you to segments:
• Account Information: Your name, address, age, gender, and devices registered to your Apple ID account. Information such as your first name in your Apple ID registration page or salutation in your Apple ID account may be used to derive your gender. You can update your account information on the Apple ID website.
• Downloads, Purchases & Subscriptions: The music, movies, books, TV shows, and apps you download, as well as any in-app purchases and subscriptions. We donâ€(TM)t allow targeting based on downloads of a specific app or purchases within a specific app (including subscriptions) from the App Store, unless the targeting is done by that appâ€(TM)s developer.
• Apple News and Stocks: The topics and categories of the stories you read and the publications you follow, subscribe to, or turn on notifications from.
• Advertising: Your interactions with ads delivered by Appleâ€(TM)s advertising platform."
This is all done in live time, keep in mind.
Re: Good on Apple. (Score:1)
Re: Good on Apple. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Advertising isn't on their balance sheet because they fold it into other categories. A Bloomberg analysis concludes that Apple's ad revenues are about $4 billion a year.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Sure they also get revenue from other streams
You have a childish viewpoint. Advertising is ~10% of Apple's revenue. 90% of it is from "other streams". By no reasonable stretch of an adult imagination does that make them "an ad agency". Google, Twitter, Meta....advertising is 80+% of their revenue so it is much more reasonable to call them ad agencies.
Only because Google gives away Android to device manufacturers for free. Android sells more devices than iOS, but Google makes a tiny percentage of them. Therefore, Google's device revenue is small. But if Google charged... say $100 per device for Android, a third of their revenue would come from that division alone.
Re: (Score:1)
LOL.. they don't charge that because who-tf would pay $100 for Android?? lmao
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect your mind was made up long before this "research."
Re: Good on Apple. (Score:2)
Re: Good on Apple. (Score:4, Interesting)
So, when an unknown "researcher" uses a *marketing* company to rate Apple against other firms based on secret criteria, you're happy to accept the verdict, because it confirms what you already thought. Got it. No, I'm not making up this stuff, it's all in the article.
By the way, Apple brings in $4 billion annually in advertising revenue. https://www.axios.com/2022/08/... [axios.com] You can bet they use tracking to drive this revenue because it's "necessary" for operating that part of its business.
Re: (Score:2)
the Apple haters who try to focus the conversation on the least egregious privacy violator.
That is like complaining about people commenting that a murder still murders, even if they aren't also a serial killer.
They still violate your privacy, even if they don't collect information about how many kids you have.
Re: Good on Apple. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This research only confirms what the industry already knows. Apple does not have Ad revenue on its balance sheet in any meaningful way.
Uhuh.
So why do they collect any information at all?
Re: (Score:2)
Because they have to in order to process your requests?
I mean, an email address, password, IP address, session cookies are 4 types of information they probably need to keep track of your requests. If you use Siri, it tracks you using an unassociated ID, so that's a 5th piece of information they track you with.
It's kind of ha
Err...yes, great? (Score:3)
It is why I use their products and services.
Things are really not great if "only" 12 privacy violations is considered praiseworthy. How about we aim for no tracking and I get to decide whether your "service" is worth letting you track me for?
quality over quantity (Score:5, Insightful)
What a useless metric. What are the 39 and what are the 12?
Re: (Score:1)
Exactly. Maybe Apple considers "background check" as one item even though it contains hundreds of data points.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: quality over quantity (Score:2)
Re: quality over quantity (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What a useless metric. What are the 39 and what are the 12?
Yep. My first thought, too.
Those first 12 data points could be 99% of the value (otherwise they'd be 13 data points for sure).
Browsing history, search history, ApplePay purchase history, location, contact list, that's only 5 and I'm already running out of ideas.
Re: (Score:2)
What a useless metric. What are the 39 and what are the 12?
Yep. My first thought, too.
Those first 12 data points could be 99% of the value (otherwise they'd be 13 data points for sure).
Browsing history, search history, ApplePay purchase history, location, contact list, that's only 5 and I'm already running out of ideas.
And the 27 could be because Apple doesn't provide the service that creates those data points. For example, Apple doesn't have a web search engine, so they're less likely to store or track web search history. They're less likely to know your interests because they don't know what you're searching for. And so on. There's a fairly large tree of data that Apple doesn't have as a direct result of them not having a search engine.
Without understanding *why* the companies collect certain types of data (and no,
Re: (Score:2)
Name, phone number/AppleID/IMSI/TMSI/carrier, email address, age, sex, income level, marital status, sexual preference, number of kids...
There are many things they could be tracking.
Re: (Score:2)
How many do they keep internally for themselves?
Re:quality over quantity (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA also fails to mention that Google asks explicit, op-in permission for every single one.
I just had a warranty replacement on my phone. When I moved my stuff over to the new one, it asked me again if I wanted to opt in to each item of data collected. When I did opt in, it sent me an email and a notification about it, with a link to opt back out again. A day later I got another email saying that a new device is contributing personal data to my account, and here is a link to disable it and delete all that data.
I don't recall anything similar from Apple when my wife got a new iPhone or iPad. Just a massive wall of text and a single checkbox to opt in to all of it, which it seemed like you had to tick to continue to use the device. It's been a few years though, they might have improved.
Re: (Score:2)
I just had a warranty replacement on my phone. When I moved my stuff over to the new one, it asked me again if I wanted to opt in to each item of data collected. When I did opt in, it sent me an email and a notification about it, with a link to opt back out again. A day later I got another email saying that a new device is contributing personal data to my account, and here is a link to disable it and delete all that data.
I have owned Pixel phones for the last few phones, and have never had that experience, that could be because of local laws that apply to you.
Re: (Score:2)
GDPR would be the relevant law. Can't really complain if your country doesn't protect your personal data.
I tried searching for these... (Score:3)
...and found no further information on what they track.
Anyone clever out there that found more?
Re: (Score:3)
Of course you didn't, that' break the spell.
Seriously, this reminds me of the green-hook red-cross "feature comparison" lists. Where the adverse products onjy has two features ("email server" and "spam filter") and your product has 37, including "can send SMTP with 4-line configuration" (adversing product needs 5), "YAML configuration files" (adverse product uses INI), "ability to distinguish between mailing lists and non-mailing lists" (adversing product doesn't care), and "Mothersip(tm) enabled spam black
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
so if you use google on Apple does that mean.... (Score:2)
The one thing fanboys can agree on... (Score:2, Troll)
Get a bunch of nerds in a room who happen to be fanboys for rival tribes, drop an incendiary topic that splits along tribal lines on the group, and watch as they set aside their differences in their rush to be the first to point out that the methodology used was poorly defined and that without additional specificity it’s impossible to say whether the data is actually meaningful. Because the one thing we can all agree on is that bad data and bad arguments are bad, no matter whose side they supposedly s
Re:The one thing fanboys can agree on... (Score:5, Funny)
You're just not smart enough to understand emacs, that's why you're so salty.
Re: The one thing fanboys can agree on... (Score:2)
Make their job harder (Score:2)
Don't use stock Chrome or Edge.
Use Tor, VPNs and proxy servers
Use tools that block cookies
www.privacytools.io
Re: (Score:2)
Brave is pretty neat. It's Chrome without the Google crap.
But you can still sync your bookmarks and passwords between device.
If only someone made a version without the crypto non-sense that earns you ~$1 each month for browsing the web.
Re: Make their job harder (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Try ungoogled-chromium, a plain chromium browser with patches that deactivate everything google/phone-home (deactivates Google Safe Browsing, Google Speech, Google public DNS, etc.) and chooses privacy-aware settings by default. Ungoogled-chromium is a community project, contrary to Brave Software Inc. that needs to earn money from you somehow to pay for their San Francisco headquarters. https://github.com/ungoogled-s... [github.com]
amazing (Score:2)
It's the facts make it sound almost like Google based their business around collecting and selling marketing metrics.
Stockapps.com? (Score:4, Interesting)
Who is this outfit, and who paid for the research? Their domain name is registered with namecheap.com, and doesn't reveal who the owner of the site is. https://domains.google.com/reg... [google.com] Wikipedia doesn't have anything on this "researcher." Is it some guy writing stuff from his parent's basement, or is it a marketing company promoting Apple? Who knows?
Secret methodology (Score:3)
The devil is always in the details. Change your definitions of things like "types of personal data" and you can make the numbers say whatever you want them to say.
Needed for its services (Score:2)
What data points exactly are "needed" for a company's services? Who gets to say what those are? Google could say that it "needs" all those data points for its services, for example, to give you better search results. Without knowing what those "types of data" are, it's hard to tell whether they are really "needed" or not.
Let's look at this another way... (Score:4)
Thief A steals $39 of my money. Thief B steals $12. What do I conclude?
That there's too many damn thieves stealing my money, that's what.
Re:Let's look at this another way... (Score:5, Insightful)
More like. Thief A steals 39 bills from your wallet, Thief B steals 12 bills.
These are units of unknown size.
Imagine the world where users paid for services (Score:2)
Fine grained wonderful privacy choices, no ads, clickbait free objective media. If you want everything free, oh well...
Re:Imagine the world where users paid for services (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have to subsidize a broken business model with my private data, nor should you.
Nobody's forcing businesses to be on the internet. If they feel they're not getting a enough bang for the buck from their online presence, they just have to shutdown their site and move on to other avenues.
Maybe you're too young to remember, but the web was almost ad-free at first, and the few ads were static images that didn't rape privacy. E-mail service is ad-free and has been for almost 50 years.
TL;DR: The current privacy nightmare is not the only possible way to have a vibrant and valuable internet.
Low number of FB (Score:3)
Now some things are important for a pleasantly useful service. For example, music you listened to or movies you watched or books you read are useful for Apple/Spotify/Netflix/Amazon etc. for recommendations. Without tracking these data points youâ(TM)d only have the generic service. I rather prefer recommendations in line with I liked before, and at the same time it is important how that data is guarded.
3rd party audience (Score:2)
this is entirely meaningless, you can buy an audience from a 3rd party and upload a list of emails/ips to google facebook apple amazon etc.
want to target pornhub premium purchasers? people who recently bought a vaccuum in target? reactivated their mailing address after getting released from prison?
all of the above is available for purchase in the USA.
'murica!
Facebook only collecting 14 datapoints (Score:2)
Apple already know about you .... (Score:2)
...So they don't need to track you much
Google are an advertising platform so they do
My first question is why is apple tracking it's users so much
Facebook (Score:2)
Tracking vs gathering. Facebook will, if you pay for the API, send you ALL the information about you AND all of your contacts.
No Microsoft? Oh the horror (Score:1)
I can't imagine the absolute horror of the /. community.
A perfect storm to pummel Microsoft (aka M$) and yet:
crickets.