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Apple Launches Portal for U.S. Users to Download Their Data
- williesleg 8y agoNo link anywhere. How do I do it?
- sjroot 8y agoThe only link in the article takes me to Bloomberg's page about Apple, which is useless to me as someone who is interested in visiting this privacy portal. If you are going to take a few minutes and write about a launch or release like this, please take the extra few seconds to include a link for your readers. Make your content useful. Relevant: https://privacy.apple.com/ https://privacy.apple.com/
- strunz 8y agoI just tried it and got: Your request could not be completed. This action could not be completed because of an error. Try again later.
- jonathanberger 8y agoI still don't get why reporters or publications seem to refuse to link to the most obvious and central key piece of material to an article. Article on a new law being passed... no link to the raw text of the law. Article about a new scientific study that has come out... ofcourse, no link to the study. Famous person issues a statement or makes a speech... sure, we'll give you a few quotes but no link to the full text. It's like, come on!
- dmortin 8y agoProbably SEO. They don't want the other page rank higher in Google than their article, so they don't pass link juice.
- function_seven 8y agoWould rel=nofollow work in that case? Makes me sad, but I'll let it go if they just put something there.
- samsolomon 8y agoI don't think so. In this case not linking to the privacy page is likely just an oversight from Bloomberg. Other publications that do this want to rank for the keywords they are linking to—those words are a vote for the internal article that is being linked. Just look up any Verge article about the Pixel 3. All the keywords link to other internal articles. They should add links and use words like Original Source or Original Video—less valuable keywords, that would still be helpful to readers. They could even nofollow those.
- function_seven 8y agoThis relates to my other peeve: trying to find the original video when something goes viral. Let's say I hear that Alice was seen telling Carol secrets about Bob. I go to Google/DDG/Youtube and search "Carol Alice secrets Bob" and get several dozen video results. ALL of them are other people trying to repackage the original video with their own commentary. News sites, bloggers, etc. How do I locate the OG footage?
- 14 8y agoAgreed. But if the original video was posted on a paywalled site then I would be looking at another site for it. So what I think it is, is that we want immediate access to the information we need to make are own judgement in this case a video. Then maybe we want to read some commentary. Most sites try force the commentary in your face coupled with adds before you find the actual video.
- jxramos 8y agoI remember putting a feature request that Google append to the video description the original source. But then you devolve into the whole authenticity realm like with Twitter verified badges.
- Splines 8y agoFor certain things sorting by time is the easiest way to test for authenticity. It doesn't always work but it's usually the easiest way. This feels like a problem that Google should be able to solve, with their web crawler and video/photo recognition capabilities.
- function_seven 8y agoOh for sure. I know it can be tricky to make that decision. Having some advanced search tools would help me do it on my own. What if I could see the results, and tell Google to show me the earliest video that has a runtime between x:xx and y:yy and is visually similar to a chosen result? With at least 50,000 views? Maybe filter out all results posted by media orgs. Or show only those results that don't have cuts in them (almost all original footage is a continuous shot of a situation, with no titles, cuts to reporters or anchors, or introductions) I think I'm headed down a rabbit trail of leveraging ContentID smarts for better searching and filtering.
- endorphone 8y agoIt's about engagement. They want you to click another article, another section, etc, while remaining on their property. Every link away is a potential loss of further reading, and is competition for your attention.
- 24gttghh 8y ago>I still don't get why reporters or publications seem to refuse to link to the most obvious and central key piece of material to an article. Because people would click the link and leave the article/news website as soon as possible, since the link will probably have more pertinent information than the drivel on bloomberg. Or, they're just that dense.
- blancheneige 8y agojournalists also like to maintain their status as gatekeepers of information
- infogulch 8y agoI suspect this is the primary reason. This happened before the internet too -- articles never include full references to their public sources -- not because a reader could just switch to reading the source (you couldn't before the internet) but because they want to maintain their power over the reader as their authoritative source of information and make sure they come back. The world is full of people looking for gates they can lock, monopolies they can secure (natural or otherwise), regulations they can capture, and gardens they can build walls around; journalism isn't exempt.
- kerng 8y agoIt would also seem appropriate for Bloomberg to link Google and Facebooks export features - I'm not sure why this is a story about Apple with no reference to others who have offered this for a long time. Otherwise it seems more like a paid article to promote a feature.
- tialaramex 8y agoYelling at them got the BBC to fix this. Of course they (in the UK at least) are just providing a service, not trying to maximise advertising exposure. They were even moderately effective at teaching journalists to write links in a natural style, ie not telling readers to "click here" or putting everything in numbered footnotes like it's still the 1980s
- merpnderp 8y agoModern journalism is about controlling what you think. If you read the source material yourself, you would form your own opinions instead of the ones they want to give you.
- icebraining 8y agoUnlike old journalism, which wasn't about that at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
- donarb 8y agoBecause Bloomberg articles are for Apple investors, not Apple customers. TechCrunch, for example, not only has links to the privacy pages, but has a screen shot of what the page looks like. That page also links to another separate page that shows exactly how to download your data. https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/apple-privacy-pages-data-access-requests/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/apple-privacy-pages-data-a...
- donarb 8y agoI should actually say: "Because Bloomberg articles are for <some company's> investors, not <some company's> customers"
- krzrak 8y ago> I still don't get why reporters or publications seem to refuse to link to the most obvious and central key piece of material to an article. They don't like to "advertise" other companies and get traffic out of their sites. I remember, many years ago, when I was doing some freelance web development, one of the customers didn't want to put a link to his Facebook page on his website, because "we won't be advertising Facebook for free".
- btmiller 8y agoBut then how else would Bloomberg keep you on their page needlessly long while you hunt for a relevant link? ;)
- snailmailman 8y agoSince I dont see a link in the article, the page is https://privacy.apple.com/ https://privacy.apple.com/ Although im in the U.S. and i dont see the option to download my data. Perhaps it hasn't rolled out to everyone? or am i looking in the wrong place?
- chomp 8y agoIn this article (https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/how-to-download-your-apple-data/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/how-to-download-your-apple...) they say: >If the “obtain your data” option isn’t immediately available, it may still take time to roll out to all customers. Time to sit and wait!
- stevenwoo 8y agoI just asked to download my notes and the ETA is one week according to the web page.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- meteor333 8y agoThanks for the link. I see an option to download all my data and I'm in US. I guess they are slowly rolling this out.
- nevster 8y agoI was able to initiate the request - I'm in Australia
- spdustin 8y agoWhen I went to https://privacy.apple.com/ https://privacy.apple.com/, I could only correct the info tied to my Apple ID, or access my purchase history. No option to download anything. Maybe that's not the right link?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fastball 8y agoIf the “obtain your data” option isn’t immediately available, it may still take time to roll out to all customers.
- canuckintime 8y agoSo how to request Apple not collect this data?
- bilbo0s 8y agoYou have to tell your iphone to stop sending it. Depending on your iphone's settings, and what data you don't want Apple collecting, that could mean anything from turning off iCloud to not using iTunes and the App Store. Basically, any app is likely giving Apple data on you. (Well I take that back. Apps will give some company data on you. But they won't necessarily give it to Apple. Obviously for full and complete privacy you would need to turn off any google, facebook and amazon stuff as well. Also any ancillary apps, like mileage meters, or health and wellness type stuff. A lot of games too now I think about it.)
- balladeer 8y ago> health and wellness type stuff This is very crucial and I really don't see any alternative services to the ones like Strava and RunKeeper for iOS. Even an app that does the job w/o any social features would do (in fact I never use the social feature aspect of these apps)
- zchrykng 8y agoHave you looked at apps by David Smith? Pedometer++, Workouts++, etc. They integrate with Apple's Health app, but don't sync anything on their own. And Apple's health app is encrypted to your device.
- balladeer 8y agoThanks. I installed Workouts++. I will try to use it to record my runs and how activity data is presented. Though I am not yet sure I can use it w/o an Apple watch.
- djrogers 8y agoThe default workout app on the Apple Watch doesn’t do any social stuff unless you try really hard to do so, and even then it’s very minimal sharing (no maps etc)
- rocky1138 8y agoWhat's to stop law enforcement circumventing the phone and just going this route to get user data for court cases? Or, is there stuff on the phone that won't be included here?
- klodolph 8y agoThis doesn’t download data from the phone at all. This only downloads data that was already stored with Apple. This doesn’t make any additional information available to law enforcement.
- kzrdude 8y agoPotentially gives law enforcement an easier way to get the information? Instead of compelling Apple to give it out (they can afford lawyers), they can try compelling individuals instead.
- pkaye 8y agoIf the police can compel individuals to give up their passwords then none of this matters.
- cromwellian 8y agoWouldn't a complete history of every App you're ever downloaded from the App Store be super useful to law enforcement to know which third parties to get a warrant for? Apple may not collect that much data, but they enable a platform which allows massive data collection. They're not exactly banning Facebook from the App Store are they? In a way, this allows them to have their cake and eat it, by avoiding criticism from 1st party data collection, but selling a curated platform that deliberately approves of it from third parties. If the FBI founds out you downloaded a white nationalist, or Islamic app, they now know where to continue their fishing expedition. This isn't exactly benign information.
- masklinn 8y ago> What's to stop law enforcement circumventing the phone and just going this route to get user data for court cases? This is data which Apple has/had already, nothing has changed there and law enforcement could already request it. This is them starting to roll out GDPR-related tools globally (it's been available since May for EU accounts). > Or, is there stuff on the phone that won't be included here? Anything which is not sent to Apple, or is only sent device-encrypted (as in, encrypted with a key which does not leave the device) or E2E encrypted. According to the section titles, the data here mostly contains account data (appstore, retail, appleid), public/shared data (gamecenter stuff) and cloud-synched stuff (bookmarks, reading list, notes, contacts, …) as well as ancillary data ("Marketing subscriptions, downloads and other activity").
- asadhaider 8y agoI'm from the UK with an Apple account registered here and it let me request a copy of all my data, so not just limited to U.S. users it seems.
- masklinn 8y ago> not just limited to U.S. users it seems. 'course not, it's GDPR stuff, it was rolled out in the EU back in May (https://9to5mac.com/2018/05/23/download-all-apple-id-icloud-data/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/05/23/download-all-apple-id-icloud-...) They're doing what they originally pledged: rolling it out globally instead of limiting it to where they're legally required to.
- sandstrom 8y agoWorks for me too (EU)
- JosephHatfield 8y agoNote that once you request your data, and indicate the maximum file size you can handle, the following message is displayed: Thank you. We are preparing your data. When your data is ready we will notify you As a reminder, this process can take up to seven days. To ensure the security of your data, we use this time to verify that the request was made by you. You can view and check the status of your request on this site at any time by visiting privacy.apple.com/account.
- mirkules 8y agoI'm surprised that nobody mentioned how big of a target this is for the criminal enterprise. Gaining unauthorized access to someone's account through this portal would be a gold mine, even better than iCloud alone.
- lmpostor 8y agoLmao my first thought
- epicide 8y agoThey mention they use the seven day period "to verify that the request was made by you". I am very curious as to what that includes.
- Gaelan 8y agoIf nothing else, that’s plenty of time for the real user to see the email notification and complain.
- sdegutis 8y agoSure but if a malicious user is going to request access to someone's iCloud, they can probably also access their emails and delete this one. Reminds me of how when I sign into my Gmail from another computer, it sends me an email saying "alert! someone signed in from this computer!" which I could immediately delete if I was a hacker. Seems useless to me.
- glhaynes 8y agoMany (I'd guess most, but I have nothing but anecdotal experience to base it on) people have a non-Apple-hosted email account tied to their Apple ID. Sure, in some cases if someone's iCloud account is compromised, their non-Apple email account is compromised, too, but in plenty they aren't.
- 14 8y agoUseless in most cases but at one point I did have emails set to come up on my iPhone's lock screen and such an email would have popped up immediately.
- Sumter 8y agowhat about the other regions user
- pwaivers 8y agoDoes anyone else think this is really cool? This makes me think even more that Apple is really a supporter of privacy and a good actor. What do you think?
- kerng 8y agoGoogle and even Facebook have had this for quite some time. So nothing new here - it's a GDPR requirement.
- masklinn 8y ago> Google, Microsoft and even Facebook have had this for quite some time. Deployed and available outside the EU, and more specifically in the US?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- confutio 8y agoGoogle Takeout has been available for years: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout?pli=1 https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout?pli=1
- radicaldreamer 8y agoYes (at least for Google and Facebook)? I think the types of content differ between regions (EU includes some legally mandated data in addition to the standard set) but user created content is definitely available for download in all regions.
- kerng 8y agoYes, not just US and EU - for everyone.
- nyolfen 8y agoi downloaded my (US) fb data when i deleted i 2014; it didnt have my social graph or anything but had all the content i posted
- kerng 8y agoGoogle had this for a long time, also Facebook and also Microsoft I believe- especially after it became a GDPR requirement most companies just rolled it out worldwide. Bloomberg's quality of research is going down a bit recently.
- Operyl 8y agoI'm not too surprised after recent debacles.. Trust, but verify I suppose.
- kodablah 8y agoI am curious (seriously, not sarcastic), which of these 4 companies has rolled this out worldwide? Surely Apple will never be able to roll this out in China?
- ApolloFortyNine 8y agoWell for now, Google has no China presence. Google Takeout has been available everywhere for years. June 2011 according to this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Takeout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Takeout
- tdb7893 8y agoGoogle has had "Google Takeout" for a fairly long time I think (I heard it started as someone's 20% project a long time ago but is a legitimate team there now but that's just hearsay)
- opportune 8y agoIt would be cool if someone could figure out how to crawl LinkedIn to parse org charts... I bet you could do that to solve problems like this. Only question is whether the participation rate in LinkedIn for that workplace is high enough
- jfim 8y agoI don't think LinkedIn has information as to whom someone reports to. It could somewhat be inferred by looking at the connection graph, but would be ridiculously noisy (for example I have connections to managers and directors I have never reported to).
- tardigras 8y agoI think this is an indicator that large centralized companies are starting to see that users' are valuing privacy and this is them signaling that they are part of the solution, when in reality this is more of a publicity stunt or a check box (so they an say, "see, we care about your privacy") than anything.
- r00fus 8y agoOr perhaps, more accurately, due to following legal requirements (GDPR) and then not keeping the feature regional. Maybe this is what will force companies to understand that stored user data is both an asset and a liability.
- milesward 8y agoPrivacy to me isn't letting me download my data, it's not letting others download it. I'm not sure how opening a door keeps others shut more tightly...
- herrkanin 8y agoPrivacy also includes data transparency and knowing what data they store about you. The best way to do this is to provide you with all data they do store about you.
- amartya916 8y agoTrue, but in this case the content behind the door is obfuscated. This reveals, or at the very least reiterates, what is behind the door. In some cases, that might result in us deciding that a bigger lock was required (or moving the contents somewhere more secure ... and so on).
- klodolph 8y agoHow do you feel about getting your credit report? Are there errors on your credit report? How would you know if you had errors on your credit report if you didn’t have access to your credit report? Is it possible that seeing the information on your credit report would give you more information, and you would change your behavior when you saw what data was recorded there?
- saagarjha 8y agoActually, privacy is not taking that data in the first place.
- pytyper2 8y agoCan I request they destroy it?
- mh8h 8y agoYou can request to delete your account. Not all of your data can be destroyed, due to legal reasons. For example, anything related to financial transactions (e.g. app purchases, subscriptions, etc) can't be deleted.
- mh8h 8y agoTo me the interesting point was how little data Apple keeps, compared to Facebook or Google.
- Dragonai 8y agoMany people have commented on this, and the response I typically see (and which makes sense to me) is that Apple makes so much money from their products that they don't need to collect and monetize detailed user data (unlike Facebook, Google, et al.) and can easily afford to come to the user's defense and protection in that realm.
- donarb 8y agoThe other thing to remember is that collecting all of that data costs time/money, not only for storing it, but for protecting it. Apple, by virtue of not having that data, doesn't have to waste resources trying to protect it.
- ehsankia 8y agoI'm curious where you are getting that data from? The article says nothing about the data contained, and most other people in this thread either don't have access at all, or are stuck behind a 7 day wait time. Have you managed to get yours? Also, what is your metric here? A lot of "journalists" comparing the takeouts from Facebook or Google use horrible metrics such as byte size, which make zero sense because these takeouts contain videos from Photos and files you've uploaded to Drive. It's in no way an indicator of how much "data" these companies collect.
- akvadrako 8y agoWhat he says is true - this has been available by via support requests or for EU residents for a while.
- invalidusernam3 8y agoJust tried it, it takes a bit of time: Thank you. We are preparing your data. When your data is ready we will notify you at XXXXXXXXX@XXX.com As a reminder, this process can take up to seven days. To ensure the security of your data, we use this time to verify that the request was made by you.
- Operyl 8y agoIt seems to be as a measure of safety, not because it takes 7 days. They’re giving time for the user to notice an unauthorized export attempt.
- st3fan 8y agoWorks in Canada too.
- crb002 8y agoAs a digital forensics practitioner this is amazing. Court orders can be served on users instead of having to rely on Apple. Usually just having information preserved is enough for both sides to come to a fair settlement.
- rahkiin 8y agoYou want to use a court order on a user to not provide information it has, but actively perform actions to obtain new data in order to hand it to law enforcement? Is this legal?
- deanmoriarty 8y agoDoes anyone know if it would support exporting iOS backups saved in iCloud?
- thetinguy 8y agoIt does not.
- mark_l_watson 8y agoSorry to be off topic, but if Apple really wanted to provide a complete “home” for customers inside their walled garden, I would suggest to them to allow tying a custom domain name to Apple email service. I trust Apple more than most other companies as I am sure many others do also. Email, calendar, iCloud storage, and Apple devices would provide a reasonably good one stop shop for privacy seeking customers.
- fipple 8y agoThat’s pretty far from their business model. They’d have to charge a lot for it to make the economics work (they don’t have the service economics of say Google), which would limit the market size, which would limit how interesting the concept is to a trillion dollar company.
- 013a 8y agoI think that's actually arguable. They have all the pieces in place to make it work; they have an email service, they have calendar, contacts, they've got everything. The only thing they don't have is the custom domain names, and they could consider becoming a registrar themselves and making that process really seamless. I'm not saying it'd be easy, but it not like they don't already offer PIM services for all their customers on iCloud, essentially for free. No one is suggesting that they should suddenly compete with G-Suite and offer business accounts.
- eugeniub 8y agoApple is one of the only major email providers that does not encrypt user email data at rest.
- anon49124 8y agoTL;DR https://privacy.apple.com/account https://privacy.apple.com/account
- craigds 8y agoHeadline is confusing. To clarify, this applies internationally. The 'U.S. users' is misleading. I just did it from NZ.
- nreilly 8y agoThis is available for Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
- readhn 8y agoThis is nice. Ok, thanks for letting me have my own data. What i really, really want is a DELETE button that wipes out all of my personal data on Apple's servers FOREVER with 0 chance of recovery. I want to press DELETE and i disappear forever from Facebook, Google, Apple, Comcast etc. Pewfff like i never existed... THAT would be cool my friends! Wake me up when that happens.....(not a chance that will ever happen).
- willstrafach 8y agoTime to wake up then. When you log in on this page, both temporary deactivation as well as true deletion are both also offered.
- crazy_monkey 8y agoGreat, can NSA download my data too now?
- blazespin 8y agoGame.changing. apple is elitist, no doubt, but in a good way.
- welder 8y agoApple's late, others already had this for years. Sure they're elitist in that they convince everyone this is revolutionary game changing one of a kind when it's normal.
- 8fingerlouie 8y agoI've been an Apple customer for the past decade or so, starting with the white 13" macbook, and the first iPhone. I've heard the argument many times that Apple is just as bad as Google/Facebook when it comes to collecting data. I checked my data when the GDPR came into effect, and was pleasantly surprised to find only information i "expected". It has my complete purchase history over every Apple product I've ever _registered_ as well as iTunes/AppStore, it has every service/repair call/appointment I've ever made. It then goes on to list everything I've uploaded to iCloud. There were no unpleasant surprises. No records of phone calls, no text messages (I don't use iMessage in iCloud), and absolutely no data i wasn't expecting them to have. Google/Facebook have become greedy, and i expect a backlash will happen eventually (if not already) where people are fed up with them siphoning every little detail of their lives.
- dx034 8y agoHave you found anything unexpected in your data download from Google? I agree that Google & Facebook (esp. Facebook) appear more greedy when it comes to data collection but that should be visible in the downloads they provide.
- simonh 8y agoThe problem is in trusting that the data they (Google, Facebook, Apple, etc) provide really is everything they have. I know Google has the DLF, but that’s more oriented to providing export access to your data stored in Google services, rather than a register of data stored about you. We need to be careful to distinguish between data we store in these services, and data these services store about us and our use of those services. Providing a summary and exports or access to the first implies nothing about the second, or who any of this data might have been sold to.
- sroussey 8y agoThe data they return is data you basically entered. So you get it back. Inferences though... things that they think might describe you, which is changing over time, does not come out. Something like profilelens.com might provide these insights. I think the CCPA talks about data flows too. Ask for data flows. Ask for justification.