Apple doubles consumer awareness of privacy risks in a new ad campaign today that focuses on how the data broker industry trades personal data on mobile users, from selling browsing history and shopping habits to location data, contacts and more.
The campaign also highlights a number of features that Apple has developed to counter this background trade in online consumer information by providing iOS users with tools they can use to counter tracking – such as protecting mail privacy. which helps users combat tracking emails; and App Tracking Transparency (ATT), which allows them to request third-party applications not to track their mobile activity.
The new 90-second advertising space will be broadcast worldwide this summer on broadcast and social media in 24 countries, according to Apple, which also said the campaign will include related advertising content, billboard distribution.
In a press conference before the launch today, the iPhone maker said it aims to show how the features they have developed can help iOS users protect their privacy by regaining control of their personal data.
The ad (which can be seen in the embedded video below) presents the data broker industry as a stage of “suspicious” “human trackers” – encountered by the protagonist, a user named Ellie, whom we meet while shopping records participate in a backdoor auction.
Shock horror! – or, well, zero surprise for those of us who are more than carelessly online – her personal data is under the hammer …
The ad features a smiling audience of data brokers making offers for Ellie’s “digital items” – including her drugstore purchases, emails she opened, details of her late-night messaging habits and contact details. her grandmother (as well as probably the rest of her address book). With growing horror at the sale of her personal information, Ellie is showing activating features on her iPhone, including the aforementioned mail privacy protection – leading to the disappearance of data brokers in a puff of smoke until the room is finally cleaned.
The advertisement strikes a decent blow in an attempt to make consumers understand – and thus care – about murky trade, which is designed to deprive them of privacy by tracking their daily activities and trade and triangulating different packages of information gathered about them, to create very detailed information. -Profile profiles – which can contain thousands of derived characteristics.
He does this by dramatizing what is undoubtedly extremely intrusive trading, such as a personal auction for a user’s data. Of course, the reality is that most tracking (and trading) is done on a scale, with trackers invisibly included in everyday services, both online (through technologies such as cookie and pixel tracking) and offline (data collected through card companies). payments, can and are sold to brokers) – so it can be difficult for consumers to understand the real effects of technologies such as cookies. Or know that there is an entire data broker industry that is busy buying and selling their information for big profits.
The ad may not be as powerful as a previous tracking-focused ad – in which Apple portrays trackers as an ever-accumulating crowd of stalkers who sneak, rudely and unquestioningly, into an iPhone user’s privacy – watching them and taking notes on their daily activities.
One narrative challenge for Apple with this latest privacy-focused ad is that it can’t show Ellie using a rival device – which could help explain why so much of her information is being tracked in the first place.
However, many of Apple’s privacy features require the user to sign in to receive the protection provided – but not all (Intelligent Anti-Tracking Safari is enabled by default, for example) – so even iOS users should take proactive action to get the best possible level of protection. That’s why Apple stands out to raise awareness of privacy – both for existing iOS users and in the hopes of encouraging Android users to make the change.
The technology giant has made privacy messages an increasingly important part of its brand over the past five years, targeting fierce attacks on what CEO Tim Cook memorablely called the “industrial data complex” in its main speech in 2018. .
This is a position that has become a major differentiator for a first-class brand in the world of modernized mobile devices and services. But it also brings Cupertino into conflict not only with advertising giants such as Google and Facebook – the latter’s revenue has reportedly fallen since Apple launched ATT, for example – but also with the developers themselves, many of whom rely on provide revenue from free apps and do so by being included in the ecosystem for tracking and targeting advertising technologies, Apple is busy warning consumers against this.
The company also risks straining relations with operators – many of whom are involved in hostile user privacy monitoring – after debuting a VPN-like, networked proxy encrypted browsing feature for iCloud + last year called Private Relay last year. The feature, which is still in beta, is designed to prevent ISPs from registering web browsing data – and it’s notable that some operators (and countries) have been reported blocking access.
Private Relay is not present in Apple’s new ad for data brokers. Asked about this, Apple said it must limit the number of features it focuses on to fit the 90-second ad format. He also noted that in addition to the feature still in beta, it needs partners in the region to work as smoothly as possible – a network that Apple said it is still building.
Some of Apple’s privacy changes – most notably ATT – have also caught the attention of competition regulators following complaints from the advertising industry. So there are broader reasons why Cupertino wants his actions to be seen by consumers in terms of confidentiality (rather than anti-competitiveness).
Earlier this year, an interesting research paper found that Apple and other large companies have managed to increase their market power as a result of the ATT feature, which gives individual users more control over what third parties can do with their data – linking more good user privacy with more concentrated data collection. Although researchers have also found evidence that the tracking industry is trying to develop its tactics to circumvent the failure to track the user.
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