Apple Inc (AAPL, Financial) promotes its users' privacy by enabling them to decide to limit their data to be tracked by Apple's algorithms. The control over how our data is tracked is what makes Apple's privacy appealing to
many users. But its newly approved patent that comes with a different approach raise question about privacy, was Apple's privacy stance a marketing gimmick only?
The U.S. Patent Office just announced on December 5, 2024, that they just approved Apple Inc (AAPL, Financial) 's “Temporal Reasoning” patent. The Apple's patent is for a sophisticated system that tracks user's activities and social interactions to generate personalized recommendations including targeting advertising based on users' life events.
The system's ability to provide users unique recommendations, experiences and advertising by collecting and studying users' data is conflicting the Apple's privacy stance about whether users will have adequate control over their data and the ability to opt out such tracking or not.
The patent is conflicting Apple's privacy stance and raising question of whether Apple's commitment to privacy is genuine or merely a marketing strategy? You can read the full details of the patent here: 20240403307.
Apple is known to have its revenue generated not only from selling its highly sought after devices. Around $96.2 billion or equal to 24.6% of the total revenue in the nine months of 2024 was generated from Services.
The Services business segment includes a variety offering such as Apple Music, Apple TV+, the App Store, iCloud, Apple Pay and AppleCare, and those are adjusted to our preferences. Apple TV+ for instance, already offers personalized recommendations based on users' past viewing habits, and for many reasons that's good.
Studying our data is meant to give better offering, more personalized contents, more preferred experience. I personally don't mind my behavior is studied. But for many users, now if they want to opt out to be tracked, as Apple has promised in its Privacy statement, the newly patented system might prevent it. Apple owes an explanation about it.
