“Our business is not based on having information about you. You’re not our product ... I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they’re making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried.”
“We take a very different view of this than a lot of other companies have. Our view is, when we design a new service, we try not to collect data,”
“We’re not in that business. I’m offended by lots of it. And so, I think people have a right to privacy.”
Is there ANY evidence that Apple is collecting data. Because it seems to me that all that is happening is that Safari is contacting an Apple service which searches Wikipedia, news, articles etc. Pretty sure it's easy to disable by switching off Smart Search Field in Safari.
Have any of the commentors used the latest Safari? Safari does not passively collect data. It is doing much more. It has what can be called search actions.
Example
Type in a Nissan dealer's name => Brings up with an Icon a clicky that would take you to the nearest Nissan dealer location on Maps.
Type in wiki X => Brings up with wiki page for X.
Pray tell how would they accomplish without processing the results?
I agree that they should have informed users before. But let us not assume something nefarious is happening.
I find it odd how quickly Apple defenders jump to "let's not assume they're evil" in these cases, when no speculation on motivation is presented.
I personally don't care about motivation. I'm not even sure that a large company like Apple can meaningfully have motivations the way that we as individual humans think of them. All that matters is what they do.
It's obvious from the title that we're supposed to see this as a privacy violation, otherwise it wouldn't be news (or the headline would be about the functionality).
However, that doesn't mean it's nefarious. I don't doubt that Apple, if it can have motivations at all, implemented this stuff with the best of intentions. But as I said, I don't care about that, I just care about what they do.
You said, "But let us not assume something nefarious is happening."
Why even bring that up unless you think somebody might assume nefariousness?
Why do I label you as an Apple defender? Because... you're defending... Apple.... Is this a trick question?
How would Apple provide this feature without sending data? I don't see how that's a relevant question. You imply that it's OK for them to do this as long as it's necessary for the feature. I disagree. The feature doesn't have to be implemented. It doesn't have to be turned on by default if it is implemented. And if implemented and turned on by default, they could do a much better job of telling you about the implications and telling you how to turn it off.
Even if you trust them to "don't be evil", i.e., don't "collect" it, they could accidentally retain it, get compromised, waste users' bandwidth, etc. All of which encroaches on privacy and personal freedom, even if it can be said they're not "collecting."
See also: NSA's definition of "collect." [0]
P.S. This is assuming the portrayal is accurate. People in the thread are saying it's not. Default-enabled stuff like this is kind of scummy IMO, though, either way.
According to TFA, "In Yosemite, all Safari web searches are sent to not only the search engine you've selected ... but also to Apple..."
So as you say Spotlight web searches have to contact some sort of search engine, but I don't know of a legitimate reason why Apple should need to know about them as well.
This is (1) in Safari, and (2) with Spotlight Suggestions disabled. Spotlight and Safari should be able to get search engine results or suggestions from the search engine without needing to go through Apple. We can speculate on what Apple is doing with this data, but it certainly seems to violate the user's "right to privacy," if not more.
I'm not sure it's a contradiction either, more of an omission, he doesn't specifically address search data in that interview. However the comments are aimed squarely at Google so the PR message rings a bit hollow.
I don't find it surprising that they're collecting as much data as they can, it just seems odd to call out competitors who do similar things.
