Apple is being sued by iPhone users in a class action for allegedly collecting their data despite the fact that the company’s own privacy settings state that they will not. The lawsuit was filed on Thursday in federal court in California, and it comes just days after Gizmodo published an exclusive report on research into how many iPhone apps send Apple analytics data. This occurs whether or not you’ve enabled iPhone Analytics in your device’s settings.
Two experts at the software company Mysk discovered the issue and discovered that Apple App Store has sent the company extensive data regarding almost everything a user does while using an app.
What you tap on, lookup for, see in ads, how you discovered a particular app, and how long you spent on its page appear to be tracked in real time by the App Store.
There are strong assurances that such tracking will be disabled by default in Apple’s privacy settings. However, testing showed that disabling iPhone Analytics or using any of the other privacy-focused settings did not prevent Apple from collecting data even when enabled.
According to tests conducted by Mysk on the App Store, Apple receives this information in addition to details that can identify you and your device, such as ID numbers, the type of phone you’re using, the screen resolution, the keyboard languages, and the internet connection type.
Researches, at Gizmodo’s request, found that many iPhone apps exhibited similar behavior. Apple Music, Apple TV, Books, the iTunes Store, as well as Stocks did gather analytics data, but Health and Wallet did not. Your list of followed stocks, the identifiers of stocks you considered or tried to search for and the time and date when you did so, and a log of any news stories you viewed in the Stocks app were all logged.
