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Apple launches new website devoted to privacy, showing off features of iPhones and Macs
New page includes features allowing users to see all of the data Apple has collected on them
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Your support makes all the difference.Apple has launched an entire website devoted to privacy as it attempts to tout the security features of its iPhones.
The new site includes the option for anyone to see all of the information that their iPhones, iPads and Macs have collected about them and sent to Apple. The company had already given access to that feature to users in the European Union, in keeping with the GDPR legislation that requires all technology companies to allow people to see data collected about themselves.
The feature comes as Apple totes its divergence away from the business strategy espoused by companies like Facebook and Google, which rely on collecting data about their users and making it available to advertisers.
The search portal can be accessed by heading to Apple's special website and logging in. From there, users can request the data – which might take some time, since Apple completes security checks to ensure that the data is really being requested by the person who owns it.
But that function is just one part of the new site, found at Apple.com/privacy, which concentrates on Apple's dictum that "privacy is a fundamental human right". By showing off a range of different features – from the Face ID facial recognition tools to Safari browsing features that try to make it more difficult for you to be tracked around the web – the new site aims to prove how Apple is working to secure information and demonstrate that it doesn't need to track users in the same way its rivals do.
The page highlights a range of technologies that Apple has made significant use of in recent years. Those include end-to-end encryption – which ensures that communications including FaceTime calls, messages, Apple Pay transactions and syncing between your different devices can't be read can't be intercepted as they pass over the internet – and privacy tools that allow it to learn about its users at the broad level without collecting information about them individually.
The majority of the website is broken down into three main sections. One covers Apple's approach to privacy and details some of those technologies as well its principles, a page given over to managing your own privacy and ensuring devices are secure, and a transparency report where Apple discloses how it deals with government requests and other attempts to get hold of people's information.
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