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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the profit-uber-alles dept.

Apple's Privacy Schtick is Just an Act, say Folks Suing the iGiant: iTunes 'Purchase Histories Sold' to Highest Bidders:

Apple has been hit with a class-action complaint in the US accusing the iGiant of playing fast and loose with the privacy of its customers.

The lawsuit [PDF], filed this month in a northern California federal district court, claims the Cupertino music giant gathers data from iTunes – including people's music purchase history and personal information – then hands that info over to marketers in order to turn a quick buck.

"To supplement its revenues and enhance the formidability of its brand in the eyes of mobile application developers, Apple sells, rents, transmits, and/or otherwise discloses, to various third parties, information reflecting the music that its customers purchase from the iTunes Store application that comes pre-installed on their iPhones," the filing alleged.

"The data Apple discloses includes the full names and home addresses of its customers, together with the genres and, in some cases, the specific titles of the digitally-recorded music that its customers have purchased via the iTunes Store and then stored in their devices' Apple Music libraries."

[...] Additionally, the lawsuit alleges the Music APIs Apple includes in its developer kit can allow third-party devs to harvest similarly detailed logs of user activity for their own use, further violating the privacy of iTunes customers.

The end result, the complaint states, is that Cook and Co are complacent in the illegal harvesting and reselling of personal data, all while pitching iOS and iTunes as bastions of personal privacy and data security.

If you are not paying for it, you are the product. But, just because you are paying for it, does not prevent you from being the product, too.


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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:31PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:31PM (#849486) Journal

    The Apple fans think that Apple is somehow immune to the big company frenzy to gather (and perhaps sell) your data far more than you'd want.

    Lots of news stories have shown them to be wrong -- Apple may be somewhat better than others, but I wouldn't trust them with anything anymore than any other large company. Nevertheless, this is "news" because Apple fans believe themselves to be immune to this sort of thing.

    Just like the professor I helped out a while ago with a project who gave me an infected MS Office file and refused to believe me when I told her she be careful because she might be passing a MS macro virus around. "Macs can't get viruses!" I was told, as though I had accused her (and her favorite company) of something horrible. I tried to explain viruses were more rare on Macs, but they sometimes occur... and Microsoft software with macros has its own issues. She was having none of it, and basically threw me out of her office.

    I have no problem with Macs, but Apple product users often have a weird sense of delusion about their products and the company who makes them.

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