Apple Responds to U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce: 'The Customer is Not Our Product'

[Diatribe]

I know you can download it, but can you delete a single piece of information? Like can I delete just few of my Google maps locations or trips?
Or few of my youTube browsing? or people I have friended in the past on FaceBook? or Search terms I searched for 2 years ago?

do they permanently delete them? I heard they retain them in backups forever. Its there, just not accessible to you. There was a service that literally has shutdown. Few years later they sent me an email, they still had my email after they SHUT DOWN!

I do not think you can selectively delete things. You can however make them delete all of it.

 

[MacBH928]

I do not think you can selectively delete things. You can however make them delete all of it.

This is another problem on how they tangle you. Because you have other important information you need to retain, they give you the option to delete all or none. For example, unless you delete your Google account(which I believe they still retain for unknown years), they keep data on you, you think its deleted but its not.

 

[Sill]

This is another problem on how they tangle you. Because you have other important information you need to retain, they give you the option to delete all or none. For example, unless you delete your Google account(which I believe they still retain for unknown years), they keep data on you, you think its deleted but its not.

That is correct. By using their services you forfeit any claim you might have to the data. Its theirs, not yours, even though the data wouldn't exist in the first place if you hadn't provided it to them by using the service. People raised a huge stink when it was discovered that Facebook "owned" the copyrights to whatever pictures people uploaded to that site (it was in the EULA, folks...), and those photos started to show up in worldwide marketing for that company as well as "third party partners". Now, people just go into cognitive dissonance and say, "Well, I have nothing to hide..."

Obviously.

The best course of action is to never have the Google account in the first place. However, something has to happen to counteract the "shadow profiles" they and other companies build on non-account users. The poor souls who are identified by their idiot friends and acquaintances who upload their contact lists to Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. The people who "tag" friends by name in uploaded photos. I have never allowed anyone to take my picture - outside of the DMV - but I really feel bad for the people who thought they were just having a good time with their friends and now their lives are posted and identified even if they don't want them to be.

 

[MacBH928]

That is correct. By using their services you forfeit any claim you might have to the data. Its theirs, not yours, even though the data wouldn't exist in the first place if you hadn't provided it to them by using the service. People raised a huge stink when it was discovered that Facebook "owned" the copyrights to whatever pictures people uploaded to that site (it was in the EULA, folks...), and those photos started to show up in worldwide marketing for that company as well as "third party partners". Now, people just go into cognitive dissonance and say, "Well, I have nothing to hide..."

Obviously.

The best course of action is to never have the Google account in the first place. However, something has to happen to counteract the "shadow profiles" they and other companies build on non-account users. The poor souls who are identified by their idiot friends and acquaintances who upload their contact lists to Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. The people who "tag" friends by name in uploaded photos. I have never allowed anyone to take my picture - outside of the DMV - but I really feel bad for the people who thought they were just having a good time with their friends and now their lives are posted and identified even if they don't want them to be.

I agree with you but there are few things to consider:-

1)Like everything free in this world, people thought it was ad-based free like TV channels. Thats how it used to be when everyone created his email accounts and geocities websites, but the transition was evil and no one noticed including myself to data-mining business.

2)Some data-mining business is pure evil no one would think it was collected. I would assume stuff like average user age and number of users etc... but stuff like tracking what time you turn on/off your devices and where do you go on the web, owning your data, and the "DELETE" option does not really delete anything just does not come to the mind of the average user.

3) They say you have an option to opt out, but do you really? To data mine your life its just 1 button, but to opt out its layers and layers of stacked and sub-stacked menus and opt-out options. Just look at how many buttons of opt-out options in the iOS Privacy settings, and here we are talking about Apple which is supposedly to be the nicer player in this data mining game. Making it worse, everything is ON by default.

 

[Sill]

I agree with you but there are few things to consider:-

Considered. We agree completely.