The latest research shows that there is still room for improvement in the privacy protection measures of Apple’s official apps. The relevant settings provided on iPhone and Mac devices are relatively limited and the options are confusing.
The research was conducted by Amel Bourdoucen and Janne Lindqvist at Aalto University in Finland.
The two experts said most of the existing research focuses on third-party apps for Apple devices, while not much has been done on privacy issues in first-party apps like Safari and Siri.
The purpose of this study is mainly 3 points:
Investigating how much data Apple’s own apps collect
Where is this data sent?
Assessing whether average users can figure out Apple’s privacy settings
Bourdoucen and Janne Lindqvist don’t question Apple’s technological prowess, but think a cluttered user interface undermines Apple’s reputation for privacy.
Part of the interview is as follows:
Our work shows that users may disable a default application, only to later discover that the disabled setting does not behave as expected.
Our findings indicate that users are unable to properly configure the privacy settings required by default applications. Additionally, we found that some default application configurations can even reduce trust in family relationships.
The researchers criticized the data collection of Apple apps like Safari and Siri, where the data is sent, how users (or cannot) disable data tracking, and how Apple provides users with privacy options.
The report takes the Siri voice assistant as an example. While Mac users can choose not to enable Siri, the service will still run in the background, collecting data from other apps to provide suggestions.
To completely disable Siri, Apple users must find privacy-related options in five different submenus in the Settings app.
Apple’s own working documentation on privacy settings is also imperfect. It doesn’t mention every privacy option, doesn’t explain how user data is processed, and doesn’t highlight whether settings are enabled or disabled.
The report states that Apple’s privacy settings document is written in legalese, which means that the average user has no interest in reading it in full, and even if it does, it is largely unable to understand the corresponding meaning.
