If you’re anything like us at Pocket-lint, you’re now super aware of the amount of data you give companies, like Apple.
Whether it’s granting full-on access to your social profiles, or casually leaving a trail of metadata, like when and who you messaged in an app, such as FaceTime, if you’re on the internet, you’re giving away information.
What we do online, the sites we visit, the things we buy, the people we message or call, the shows we watch… that’s all user data, and it can be harvested and analysed to figure out who you are and what you’re most likely to do next. Companies use that information to tailor ads, sell you relevant goods, and, in some cases, manipulate you.
But consumers are becoming more aware of this business, and they want to know which companies track them and what type of information is stored on them. You can download a copy of your data fromFacebook,Instagram, and many other sites and services.But what about Apple?Does it provide a similar data-download tool?
Why, yes, it does.
How to find out what data Apple has on you
If you’d like to get a copy of your data from Apple, follow these steps:
How long does it take to receive your data?
Apple will email the email address associated with your Apple ID to let you know it is preparing your data report. It can take up to seven days to get the report.
When the report is ready, it will be sent to the email address associated with your Apple ID.
An email should arrive within seven days. It will include a password that’s used to open a zip file of your data. The zip file will contain folders with mostly Excel spreadsheets, but there could also be files in JSON, CSV, XML, or PDF format.
Documents, photos and videos will appear in their original format. Contacts, calendars, and bookmarks in VCF, ICS, and HTML format.. The files will be no bigger than the limit you selected.
What type of data does Apple have on you?
The answer to this question depends on you, how many Apple devices and services you have used, and how often you’ve interacted with Apple in the past. Here are some examples of what you might find:
And that’s about it. Clearly, Apple collects information about you, but you won’t see anything dire like copies of entire messages, ads you’ve clicked, or copies of your photos - all things that services like Google and Facebook can have on you. But, remember, Apple is a hardware maker. It’s not entirely focused on serving you ads.
