Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Mobile & Wireless

Apple’s App Stores Open New Privacy Window for Customers

Apple has begun spelling out what kinds of personal information is being collected by the digital services displayed in its app stores for iPhones and other products made by the trendsetting company.

Apple has begun spelling out what kinds of personal information is being collected by the digital services displayed in its app stores for iPhones and other products made by the trendsetting company.

Starting Monday, the additional disclosures will begin to appear in apps made for iPads, Mac computers and Apple’s TV streaming device, as well as its biggest moneymaker, the iPhone. Apple announced the changes were coming six months ago as part of an effort to help its customers gain a better understanding of how apps monitor their habits, tastes and whereabouts.

In many instances, the data scooped up by apps is used to sell ads targeted at a particular person’s interest and location, especially if their services are being offered for free.

The increased transparency about the collection and handling of personal information is designed to help people make more informed decisions about which apps they choose to install on their phones and other devices.

The changes were worked out with European regulators and mesh with Apple’s efforts to position itself as a trustworthy guardian of its customers’ privacy — an issue CEO Tim Cook has been framing a “fundamental human right.” In the process, Cook has been taking veiled shots at Google and Facebook, which make most of their money from digital ads that are driven by the mining of personal information.

Apple also has plans to impose a new mandate that will require all iPhone apps to obtain permission before tracking a person’s activities on the device. That surveillance is currently done automatically by many apps, forcing people to go to the time and trouble to block the tracking in the settings of each app.

The anti-tracking feature was supposed to be released in September, but Apple delayed after Facebook and many other app makers protested. Apple is vowing to oust apps from its stores if they try to bypass the new anti-tracking rule when it becomes effective next year.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Written By

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

SecurityWeek’s Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit brings together security practitioners from around the world to share war stories on breaches, APT attacks and threat intelligence.

Register

Securityweek’s CISO Forum will address issues and challenges that are top of mind for today’s security leaders and what the future looks like as chief defenders of the enterprise.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Mobile & Wireless

Infonetics Research has shared excerpts from its Mobile Device Security Client Software market size and forecasts report, which tracks enterprise and consumer security client...

Mobile & Wireless

Apple rolled out iOS 16.3 and macOS Ventura 13.2 to cover serious security vulnerabilities.

Cybersecurity Funding

Los Gatos, Calif-based data protection and privacy firm Titaniam has raised $6 million seed funding from Refinery Ventures, with participation from Fusion Fund, Shasta...

Mobile & Wireless

Critical security flaws expose Samsung’s Exynos modems to “Internet-to-baseband remote code execution” attacks with no user interaction. Project Zero says an attacker only needs...

Privacy

Many in the United States see TikTok, the highly popular video-sharing app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, as a threat to national security.The following is...

Mobile & Wireless

Technical details published for an Arm Mali GPU flaw leading to arbitrary kernel code execution and root on Pixel 6.

Mobile & Wireless

Two vulnerabilities in Samsung’s Galaxy Store that could be exploited to install applications or execute JavaScript code by launching a web page.

Artificial Intelligence

Two of humanity’s greatest drivers, greed and curiosity, will push AI development forward. Our only hope is that we can control it.