How much does Apple know about me? The answer surprised me

I have a theory that the only reason Apple is today&#x27;s beacon of user privacy is that they couldn&#x27;t manage to compete in either the ad (iAd), mail (at least not at G-scale) or social network world (see: Ping).<p>The only path left for them was to say they were all about user privacy. If Apple <i>had</i> succeeded wildly in any of those three spaces, I think they&#x27;d be caught up like Google, Facebook et al.<p>I&#x27;m not saying this is a bad thing for the tech ecosystem, but I do think it was lucky positioning on their part.<p>Interested to hear opposing opinion on this.

<i>&lt;Your Siri requests —&quot;Show me how to get to PF Chang&#x27;s,&quot; or &quot;What year was Steve Jobs born?&quot; go back to Apple — but it uses a random identifier to mask your identity. So a Siri search for the closest Chipotle restaurant will only tell Apple that a user requested the data, but not associate it with me.&gt;</i><p>I find that comforting. In fact, if I was a large organization and processed a ton of user data, I&#x27;d want to store that data anonymously too, due to the sheer risk of having that personal data.

Clickbait headline - could it get changed to clarify the alleged answer is “very little”?

To be fair, MB of data is kinda a crummy metric because for Facebook that&#x27;s primarily photos and videos

I always question the effectiveness of obfuscating data using &quot;unique identifiers&quot; against a party determined to de-obfuscate the data. Aside from that, however, this is an encouraging read.

Apple needs to create a dashboard exactly like the Google one.<p>Their agreement allows them to collect tons of data but there is no transparency on what they have and no ability to remove or download.<p>The Google one also has all your devices in one place with what apps and permissions you have granted. Exactly what I would like for my Apple devices.

Okay, wait. So tech company can store all that data under “xyz anon user” and then they don’t have any data about you?

It would be nice to have more than &quot;Apple also offers data downloads in the privacy section of its website. It&#x27;s hard to find...&quot;<p>I can&#x27;t find it... I started at icloud.com which sent me to appleid.apple.com which sent me to apple.com&#x2F;privacy&#x2F; and I never found a data download link.

How can it direct you to the nearest Chipotle if it doesn&#x27;t know where you are? It must know who you are at least at the time of the query

Just pointing out the obvious: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.<p>The only eyeopening part would be the fact, that Apple doesn&#x27;t store much about it&#x27;s users, which isn&#x27;t verifiable.<p>Also unique identifiers are not the only way to link data. And due to differential privacy the guarantees that the data cannot be linked decays over time (see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15224312" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15224312</a>)

This click baity title didn’t come from the article. You’ll never guess what happens next!

The title of this article is click-bait, surely? Apple have made much PR out of their privacy stance. Indeed, the article says: &quot;Apple makes a big deal about its different approach to privacy on the company website&quot;.<p>How is this eye opening?

Did we really need a photo of the author holding a prinout of the data?<p>&gt; It kept a copy of every app and song I&#x27;d downloaded, every tune I&#x27;d added to my iTunes music library, and every time I needed repair on a multitude of Apple devices going back a decade.<p>Is this surprising in any way? If you buy something (or &quot;buy&quot; it for free on the App Store) of course the company you buy it from keeps records of that.

8days= more time to filter user content and claim they have no data about you