Class action lawsuit filed against Apple over illicit data collection

11/15/2022 / By Belle Carter

Apple users recently filed a class action lawsuit against the Big Tech company for allegedly collecting data without their knowledge.

The case was filed following an expose by software company Mysk, published by tech website Gizmodo. The company investigated the data collected by Apple iPhone mobile applications, which include App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Books and Stocks, and found the analytics control and other privacy settings did not affect its data collection.

Application developers and security researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry conducted a study that suggested Apple was still collecting the user’s and phone’s extremely detailed data when its own settings promised to “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether.”

“The level of detail is shocking for a company like Apple,” Mysk told Gizmodo.

The suit’s plaintiff Elliot Libman is suing on behalf of himself and other impacted consumers, alleging that Apple’s privacy assurances are in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act. The complaint detailed the researchers’ findings, specifying what data was being collected. It also alleged that Apple’s assurances and promises regarding privacy are “utterly false.”

“The data Apple surreptitiously collects is precisely the type of private, personal information consumers wish and expect to protect when they take the steps Apple sets out for users to control the private information Apple collects. There is no justification for Apple’s secret, misleading, and unauthorized recording and collection of consumers’ private communications and app activity,” the lawsuit included.

TechCrunch wrote that the plaintiff is looking to have the lawsuit certified as a class action and is seeking compensatory, statutory and punitive damages in addition to other equitable monetary relief.

Apple can use “vacuumed” information for surveillance and control

According to the report, the App Store is harvesting information about every single thing users are doing in real time, including what they tapped on; which apps they search for; what ads they saw; and how long they looked at a given app and how they found it. (Related: The all-seeing “i”: Apple just declared war on your privacy.)

The app allegedly sent details about both the user and the device, including ID numbers, the kind of phone, screen resolution, keyboard languages and how the consumer is connected to the internet. Mysk noted that these are “the kind of information commonly used for device fingerprinting.”

“Opting out or switching the personalization options off did not reduce the amount of detailed analytics that the app was sending,” the technology research company said, adding that they switched all the possible options off, namely personalized ads, personalized recommendations and sharing user data and analytics.

As per the website’s request to the research firm to examine more apps, the Health and Wallet apps did not transmit any analytics data, regardless of whether the iPhone Analytics setting was on or off. But Apple Music, Apple TV, Books, the iTunes Store and Stocks all did. Most of the apps that sent analytics data shared consistent ID numbers, which would allow Apple to track your activity across its services, according to the researchers.

“For example, the Stocks app sent Apple your list of watched stocks, the names of stocks you viewed or searched for and time stamps for when you did it, as well as a record of any news articles you see in the app,” Mysk said. “That transmission was separate from the iCloud communication necessary to sync your data across devices. Unlike the other apps, however, Stocks app sent different ID numbers and far less detailed device information.”

This kind of data collection would raise questions about Apple’s implementation of Apple Tracking Transparency (ATT), which the firm said would give users more control over how their app data was used in personalized advertising.

Replying on Mysk’s thread, Twitter users expressed concerns that Apple’s “hidden operation” may not be used for marketing purposes only, but for surveillance and control as well.

Visit PrivacyWatch.news for more stories related to technocrats’ surveillance methods.

Watch the video below that talks about Apple’s total surveillance of all users.

This video is from the InfoWars channel on Brighteon.com.