#Apple #Sued for Allegedly #Deceiving #Users With #Privacy_Settings After Gizmodo Story
Apple is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly harvesting iPhone user data even when the company’s own privacy settings promise not to. The suit, filed Thursday in California federal court, comes days after Gizmodo exclusively reported on research into how multiple iPhone apps send Apple analytics data, regardless of whether the iPhone Analytics privacy setting is turned on or off.
The problem was spotted by two independent researchers at the software company Mysk, who found that the Apple App Store sends the company exhaustive information about nearly everything a user does in the app, despite a privacy setting, iPhone Analytics, which claims to “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether” when switched off. Gizmodo asked the researchers to run additional tests on other iPhone apps, including Apple Music, Apple TV, Books, and Stocks. The researchers found that the problem persists across most of Apple’s suite of built-in iPhone apps.
The lawsuit accuses Apple of violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act. “Privacy is one of the main issues that Apple uses to set its products apart from competitors,” the plaintiff, Elliot Libman, said in the suit, which can be read on Bloomberg Law. “But Apple’s privacy guarantees are completely illusory.” The company has plastered billboards across the country with the slogan “Privacy. That’s iPhone.”
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As seen in a video posted to the Mysk YouTube Channel, the App Store appears to harvest information about your activity in real time, including what you tap on, which apps you search for, what ads you see, how you found a given app and how long you looked at the app’s page.
Apple’s privacy settings make explicit promises about shut off that kind of tracking. But in the tests, turning the iPhone Analytics setting off had no evident effect on the data collection, nor did any of the iPhone’s other built-in settings meant to protect your privacy from Apple’s data collection.
Mysk’s tests on the App Store found that Apple receives that data along with details that can identify you and your device, including ID numbers, what kind of phone you’re using, your screen resolution, your keyboard languages and how you’re connected to the internet—the kind of information commonly used for device fingerprinting.
VIDEO HERE: https://youtu.be/8JxvH80Rrcw
STATIC PAGE HERE: https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-privacy-analytics-class-action-suit-1849774313
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