How Apple is making distinctions over user privacy control

The proverbial gauntlet was thrown earlier this year when mobile analytics firm Flurry Inc. bragged about spotting 50 unspecified devices on Apple Inc.’s campus. Those devices were iPads, in all likelihood, and Apple wouldn’t formally announce the product until days later.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs waited more than four months before he counter attacked at the D8 conference earlier this month. But when he did, it opened a new privacy discussion, particularly as it relates to Apple and the distinctions Jobs is trying to make around personal user data.
If there’s one thing you can count on with Apple, it’s that it doesn’t like leaks. Usurping the company’s ability to keep details about forthcoming products under lock and key has become a global pastime of sorts. Apple defends its products with all the legal might it can buy and an obsessive, parent-like protective stance that’s rarely seen in business.
And so it was that Jobs called out Flurry in a big way during a question-and-answer session at the event, still visibly angered by the whole affair. Ironically, and perhaps unknown to him, he was responding to a question from First Round Capital’s Chris Fralic, an investor in Flurry, according to All Things Digital.
Flurry VP Peter Farago wrote about the Apple tablets in a blog post, and as you can imagine the news was picked up fast.
Apple clamps down on third-party tracking firms
“We’re real naive about this stuff. One day we read in the paper that a company called Flurry Analytics has detected that we have some new iPhone and other tablet devices that we’re using on our campus,” Jobs said. “We thought: What the hell?”
In retaliation, Apple has essentially locked out all third-party analytics firms that track users and transmit device-specific information.
“The way that they detected this was they’re getting developers to put their software in their apps and their software is sending out information about the device and about its geolocation and other things back to Flurry. No customer is ever asked about this. It’s violating every rule in our privacy policy with our developers, and we went through the roof about this,” Jobs said earlier this month. “So we said: ‘No. We’re not going to allow this.’ This is violating our privacy policies and it’s pissing us off — that they’re publishing data about our new products.”
For good measure, Jobs said Apple will allow other ad networks onto its platform and allow for the ability to track ads’ performance — a worthwhile point since Apple plans to launch its own iAds platform July 1.
“We’re only going to allow these analytics that don’t give device information and that are solely for the purposes of advertising. In other words, if a developer needs to put some analytics in their app that sends some information out to an advertiser so that they can make some money — because we’re not going to be the only advertiser, there’s others, we’re not banning other advertisers from our platform — they can do that. But they can’t send data out to an analytics firm who’s going to sell it to make money and publish it to tell everyone that we have devices in our campus that we don’t want people to know about it. That we don’t need to do,” Jobs said.
When he was pushed further about the inherent benefit that developers would gain from knowing where and when their apps are being used, Jobs left the door open ever so slightly for a less restrictive policy down the road.
“There’s no excuse for them not asking the customer whether it’s appropriate to send that personal, private data to an analytics firm, which they were not doing,” Jobs concluded. “And secondly, after we calm down from being pissed off, then we’re willing to talk to some of these analytics firms. But it’s not today.”
Nearly three weeks later, Jobs reiterated his point on user privacy and pointed again to Flurry in one of his storied email exchanges, this time with a developer named Malcolm Barclay.
“All the data Flurry is collecting is not anonymous, and the user is never asked their permission to give any data,” Jobs wrote. “Two cardinal privacy rules violated.”
Apple’s updated privacy policy
Apple’s flirtation with user privacy hit a new formality this week when it pushed a new privacy policy to its users. The revised policy came part and parcel with Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 4, which was released on Monday, just three days before it releases the iPhone 4.
Users must agree to the new policy before upgrading to the latest OS and the agreement also pops up when users attempt to download new apps or media from the iTunes store or App Store.
While it’s unlikely even a fraction of users actually read the agreement, Apple does ask for implicit permission to “collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device.”
What Apple plans to do with this data and who it might make privy to this personal user information is unknown.
Apple only mentioned it’s new Find My iPhone app in relation to the data collection, but it’s surely opening the gates a little more for its forthcoming iAds platform as well. Apple has framed the privacy policy changes as necessity to “improve our services, content, and advertising.”
The passage in question continues: “This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.”
However, as The Los Angeles Times points out, Apple doesn’t specify which partners or licensees are being given access to user location data, but Apple does let users control which apps can use location information under its new settings menu.