Apple's New Ad Campaign Underlines How Data Brokers Operate And Privacy Control For Users

Apple's new brand campaign underlines how the data broker industry operates and how they sell the personal and financial information of users.

Apple's new brand campaign underlines how data brokers build profiles of users by utilising their offline as well as online data. Image: Apple

New Delhi: Aiming to highlight the importance of privacy and educate users to take control of their financial and personal information, Apple has unveiled its new brand campaign that will be aired globally in 24 countries, including India. Apple's new brand campaign underlines how the data broker industry operates and how they sell the personal and financial information of users, including shopping habits, location and browsing history and contacts among other details.

In its new brand campaign, the tech giant also highlights how the latest updates in iPhone models and other Apple devices are bringing in more privacy and better data control for its users. According to the Cupertino, California-based tech giant, the new 90-second advertisement will be aired globally this summer and will include related creative being featured on hoardings.

"Over the past decade, a large and opaque industry has been amassing increasing amounts of personal data. A complex ecosystem of websites, apps, social media companies, data brokers, and ad tech firms track users online and offline, harvesting their personal data," the tech giant said.

How data brokers operate and harvest user data

Apple's new brand campaign underlines how data brokers build profiles of users by utilising their offline as well as online data. For example, according to the iPhone maker, a data broker collects data of almost 700 million users worldwide and creates profiles for up to 5,000 characteristics. Apple users will be able to track what permissions and how often apps ask to access microphones, contacts, locations, photos, cameras among others.

How Apple is improving privacy and transparency

Apple's new iOS 15.2 and iPadOS 15.2 lets the user turn on App Privacy Report if they want to see details on how often the apps access user data such as location, microphone, camera and more.

Apple's App Tracking Transparency lets users choose if an app can track their activity across other brands' apps and websites for the purposes of advertising or sharing their information with data brokers.