Apple is the one brand that has long been steadfastly against any kind of data sharing, going as far as to not allow the FBI or any other security agencies access to your devices. But now it seems that Apple is putting its guard down, although in certain cases only.
In the period between January 2018 to June 2018, Apple granted the Indian government’s requests regarding 27 devices and 18 accounts due to an iTunes Gift Card fraud investigation. In addition to this, the government also issued a number of subpoenas and warrants, including 34 financial identifiers and 3 emergency requests.
All of this came to light when Apple released its bi-annual transparency report for the January-June 2018 period, which also showed that Apple provided data in 63% device requests, 78% account requests, and in 85% cases owing to financial identifiers. As for the emergency requests, all 3 were granted.
In a statement issued by the company, they stated that “One request may contain one or multiple identifiers. We count the number of identifiers identified in each request and report the total number of identifiers by type (Device, Financial Identifier, and Account).”
Moving out of the Indian Subcontinent, the company received 32,342 requests from governments around the world for access to 1, 63,823 devices, 80% of which were granted. That is to say that the tech giant allowed more than 25,000 government issued requests to access customer data. The fact that the number of requests granted has risen by 9% in the first half of 2018 as compared to the July-December period of 2017, shows that the Cupertino based company is becoming less stringent in data sharing matters.
If you were paranoid about Mark sharing your data, it may be time to start worrying about what direction Apple’s data sharing policies may go, but as the company maintains, “Apple is committed to your privacy and being transparent about government requests for customer data globally. This report provides information on government requests received.”