Apple's Tim Cook Says the Fight to Protect Privacy Is a Crucial One
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Loading... - Liam Burton
- 13 Apr 2022
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Calling it "one of the most essential battles of our time," Apple CEO Tim Cook said Tuesday that his company will continue to fight for data privacy protections that are in the best interests of consumers.
Cook also pushed back against charges that his company's tight controls over its app store are anti-competitive. While Apple maintains that the controls protect consumer security and privacy, the store is the only official way to download apps to iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs and Apple Watches.
Speaking at the International Association of Privacy Professionals' Global Privacy Summit, Cook said privacy continues to be threatened by the "data industrial complex," which seeks to collect information about everything from the restaurants where people eat and the stores where they shop to the websites they browse.
While those companies say they're collecting that data in order to provide consumers with a more custom experience, they usually don't give consumers a choice about it, Cook noted.
"Who would stand for such a thing if it were unfolding in a physical world?" he asked, noting that few people would actually agree to have someone with a camera follow them as they took their child to school, or watch them as they worked on their laptop.
"You wouldn't call that a service, you'd call that an emergency," he said. "In the digital world it is one too."
Cook pointed to several features designed to protect data privacy that Apple has introduced in recent years, noting that users can now decide for themselves if their apps should be able to track their activity across their devices, as well as take steps to mask their location and shield their email addresses if they desire.
He also pointed to Apple's efforts to minimize the data it collects and maximize the amount of processing that's done on device, rather than in the cloud, reducing the risk that consumer data could be stolen by cybercriminals. Read More…
