Apple Collects Enough Data From Your Phone to Track the People You Hang Out With
A study from Trinity College Dublin examined Apple’s data collection last year and found, among other problems, that the company collects data that could be used to track the people you spend time with.
The research found that when you have WiFi on, you iPhone sends the Wifi MAC addresses of all the other devices on your network. If you have location services turned on, the data includes precise GPS information, the study said. That means that if Apple wanted to, it could identify anyone who’s in close proximity to you, friends, family, coworkers or otherwise.
“In particular, it is disappointing to see that so much handset data is being collected by Apple,” said Doug Leith, the Trinity College professor who conducted the study, in an interview with ScienceX. “I think iPhone users often believe that their handsets offer greater privacy than Android handsets, and certainly Apple themselves make great play of the importance of privacy. Yet our study finds that Apple collects pretty much the same sort of data as Google.”
