Apple iPhone data not as anonymous as company says: Researchers

Apple's shared analytics data is not as anonymous as they claim it to be

App developers and part-time security researchers at Mysk uncovered through their analysis that Apple shares its analytics data of App Store which is directly linked to user’s accounts.

Through series of tweets on their official Twitter account, the team stated that they have verified Apple sharing its analytics data doesn’t stay anonymous and therefore can trace back to the specific iCloud account to which it is linked to.

Apple officially states its Analytics policy stating that “none of the collected information identifies you personally”.

iPhone Analytics may include details about hardware and operating system specifications, performance statistics, and data about how you use your devices and applications. None of the collected information identifies you personally.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/device-analytics/

How Apple shares analytics information

Mysk further explained that the analytics data that is shared includes of “Directory Services Identifier” referred to as “DSID” which is an ID that identifies each of the iCloud account uniquely.

Apple's iPhone was seen sharing analytics data that links back to the specific iCloud ID.

This isn’t the only thing the researchers uncovered, they tweeted saying that Apple’s App Store keeps sharing detailed analytics data even when sharing analytics is switched off in the settings. Although Apple states in their Device Analytics and Privacy saying that “you may also choose to disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether” but as per the researcher, it is one of their lies.

RELATED: Android Lock Screen Bypass by Accident: $70K Reward

Previously Mysk had discovered that iOS 16 did communicate with the Apple Services escaping the VPN tunnel, even if it as enabled. Not only this, but it was seen leaking DNS requests. The Apple services that did escape the active VPN tunnel included of Health, Maps and Wallet.

Conclusion

Apple apparently now is on the road to becoming an ad company despite of its privacy claims. Google and Meta have been in the game of being an ad company that made billions by collecting users data to target them with ads. Apple did take notes well! As we all can see.

It seems that Apple wants to keep it’s users data to themselves since they have been introducing privacy measures to prevent their competitors from accessing it. Privacy for such company simply is a claim that “nobody can access your data, apart from us”.

Have anything to add? Share it in comment or contact us!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *