Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don’t “monetize” the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.
This is a strong, direct statement from Apple on privacy which I don’t think any of its competitors could make honestly. I’ve been looking for Apple to be more outspoken about their great stand on customer privacy. A lot of my clients have concerns about privacy but don’t feel qualified to judge any one product or service provider against another — from this perspective, picking a phone, an email provider, or an operating system is a Hobson’s choice. This new Privacy section of Apple’s site includes a lot of details about how Apple uses, doesn’t use, and protects your data, all explained in direct, unambiguous, extremely readable language. Hopefully this starts to illuminate the issue for consumers and puts pressure on Apple’s competitors to clarify their own use of our personal information.