Apple was involved in a very controversial case in 2011 [1]. IIRC, the resolution involved nothing about them claiming that tracking user location without their consent was bad, and focused only on the fact that the data was easily accessible a by 3rd parties.
In fact, they still collect tonnes of data from phones, but now they're more careful about the data not being user-accessible. A few quotes from the link you posted to their privacy policy:
> "We also collect data in a form that does not, on its own, permit direct association with any specific individual."
The "on its own" sounds a little scapegoat-y tbh.
> "We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, referrer URL, location, and the time zone where an Apple product is used"
You can learn and infer a lot from those vectors. Towards the end of the paragraph they also mention that they use this data, amongst other things, to deliver "better advertising".
> "We may collect information regarding customer activities on our website, iCloud services, our iTunes Store, App Store, Mac App Store, App Store for Apple TV and iBooks Stores and from our other products and services. Aggregated data is considered non‑personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy."
Ofc.
> "We may collect and store details of how you use our services, including search queries. [...] Except in limited instances to ensure quality of our services over the Internet, such information will not be associated with your IP address."
Ensuring "quality of services over the Internet" is _incredibly_ broad. For a company like Apple it could apply pretty much to anything tbh.
A lot of people don't know Apple collects all this data; and part of it is probably the fact you can't disable this collection. Only App usage, the one that might also be shared with 3rd party devs, is optional.
Thinking Apple doesn't take part on Google or Facebook scale data collecting because they sell phones and not ads is not only inaccurate (they do sell ads), but also a little naive. Data is very valuable. I'm not saying Apple doesn't care about privacy; their business model relies a less on individual targeting than Google or Facebook, but they're also in on the game of understanding users as much as possible, and given they control the phone they're in very deep.
In fact, they still collect tonnes of data from phones, but now they're more careful about the data not being user-accessible. A few quotes from the link you posted to their privacy policy:
> "We also collect data in a form that does not, on its own, permit direct association with any specific individual."
The "on its own" sounds a little scapegoat-y tbh.
> "We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, referrer URL, location, and the time zone where an Apple product is used"
You can learn and infer a lot from those vectors. Towards the end of the paragraph they also mention that they use this data, amongst other things, to deliver "better advertising".
> "We may collect information regarding customer activities on our website, iCloud services, our iTunes Store, App Store, Mac App Store, App Store for Apple TV and iBooks Stores and from our other products and services. Aggregated data is considered non‑personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy."
Ofc.
> "We may collect and store details of how you use our services, including search queries. [...] Except in limited instances to ensure quality of our services over the Internet, such information will not be associated with your IP address."
Ensuring "quality of services over the Internet" is _incredibly_ broad. For a company like Apple it could apply pretty much to anything tbh.
A lot of people don't know Apple collects all this data; and part of it is probably the fact you can't disable this collection. Only App usage, the one that might also be shared with 3rd party devs, is optional.
Thinking Apple doesn't take part on Google or Facebook scale data collecting because they sell phones and not ads is not only inaccurate (they do sell ads), but also a little naive. Data is very valuable. I'm not saying Apple doesn't care about privacy; their business model relies a less on individual targeting than Google or Facebook, but they're also in on the game of understanding users as much as possible, and given they control the phone they're in very deep.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/04/how-apple-tracks-you...