May 23, 2018
You would have thought, with the Cambridge Analytica scandal and GDPR rapidly approaching, that Apple would take extra care to stay well away from anything that isn’t guaranteed to be 100% safe and secure. Unfortunately, a data leak exposing the Apple ID’s of its customers through a monitoring app means that Apple are about to know the wrath of the general public when they feel their data privacy has been violated.
The aforementioned app used for monitoring its users, TeenSafe, has leaked information stored through the apple IDs of its users. Since the app is used for parents to monitor their children, both the parents and children’s information has been released.
The app creates an environment for parents to keep track of what their children are doing, by making sure they are safe by monitoring their texts, social media posts and even the location of the phone and its user. It could be argued that the concept for the app already sounds invasive, but you have to admit it’s invasive with the best intentions. Naturally this sort of app is a prime target for all sorts of cyber criminals, due to the personal information enclosed.
However, Apple aren’t necessarily the ones to blame for this, in fact it’s because of their reputation that there are articles emphasising Apple’s involvement, even though it was only a handful of Apple’s IDs that were among the data leaked. The finger should be pointed at the bigger culprits of this incident, who are arguably the people in charge of security of the servers at TeenSafe, and obviously the person/people who leaked the data itself.
Apple is used to leaks, with information about their upcoming projects being prematurely available for public consumption every week it seems, for example, recently the design of their new iPhone had been leaked and put up on the big technology websites like Forbes.
This breach in data is different, Apple itself aren’t the ones whose data is being abused, it’s the users of Apple IDs, Apple’s customers. This could be considered even worse than Apple itself having its data exposed, certainly in terms or PR, now people will distrust the massive technology conglomerate for their minor involvement in this data leak.
Nobody likes to feel exposed or vulnerable, but Apple indirectly have probably made their users feel this way, particularly at a time where data protection is at its most sensitive. However when you really think about it Apple are taking to brunt of this backlash, even though they aren’t the reason it’s come about.
With Apple’s vast amount of customers which span the globe, the data leak has the power to affect a very large number of people who may now feel Apple to be untrustworthy which can be devastating for a brand, however, thanks to Apple’s ubiquity, although there may be some people don’t buy the newest iPhone or even completely boycott Apple entirely, this would be a small blip compared to the rest of their vast audience who will stand by Apple. So it is very likely they will bounce back from this.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40575420/a-teen-monitoring-app-has-leaked-thousands-of-apple-ids
https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/teensafe-data-breach-apple-id-leaked-1855103
