Apple's New Privacy Pages: Your Reading Assignment!

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In this day and age, when the western world is being increasingly China-fied and Russia-fied, IOW devolving into totalitarian surveillance states, it's wonderful to watch Apple resist and insist upon user privacy. Good on 'em!

It used to be that Apple merely provided semi-annual transparency reports, annual white papers on Apple gear security and some diffuse documents about securing, hardening our Apple devices. Now, everything has been gathered into one area on their website for easy access along with elaborations no doubt inspired by EU's GDPR, General Data Protection Regulations.

Where to start:

Privacy - Apple

• Our Approach to Privacy
• Manage Your Privacy
• Transparency Report
• Our Privacy Policy

The pages tend to be iOS centric, no surprise of late. But Apple's privacy policy is relevant to Mac gear as well. As we dig into the various sub-subjects, we find an elaborate exposition of Apple security details. Take an hour and dig around. If you require security on your Apple gear, it's worth the time to read through it all in order to know what Apple offers and how to put it to work for you.

Topics include:

• Encryption (Get stuffed Australia surveillance maniacs!)
• Apple Pay
• iMessage, FaceTime
• Health and fitness data
• Analytics (under our control!)
• Safari
• iCloud
• Education
• Advertising
• Photos
• Siri & Dictation
• HealthKit
• Music
• News
• Maps
• Siri & Spotlight
• DeviceCheck
• HomeKit
• ResearchKit
• CareKit
• CloudKit

There are odds and ends here I'd hadn't been aware of!

The core of the Privacy site is Manage Your Privacy. All of us should dig through this page in order to maximize our understanding and control of our own privacy settings.

What everyone should read NOW:

Manage Your Privacy:

• Secure your devices
• Manage your Apple ID
• Be aware of what you're sharing

Each of these sections provides links to helpful, more detailed information. 

Of most immediate concern is this section under Manage your Apple ID:

Beware of phishing! Phishing spam has become increasingly elaborate and deceitful. The worst of these are the fake charge receipts. The idea is to send us scrambling to UNdo charges we are lead to believe have been made without our permission. They are remarkably successful, as has been demonstrated most explicitly in China in recent weeks. Apple provides further elaboration about phishing HERE.  

It takes time to pour through all this, but it's well worth it.

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