Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, Nov. 14 (Xinhua)-- Apple is facing a proposed U.S. federal class action lawsuit accusing it of recording users' mobile activities without their consent and privacy guarantees, in violation of the California Privacy infringement Act, Bloomberg reported.

In a lawsuit filed by iPhone 13 user Elliot Libman in New York, Apple is reportedly accused of "completely mistakenly" ensuring that users can control the information they share when using its iPhone stock app.

The class action alleges that Apple's mobile device option banning device analytics sharing and opting out of settings such as "allow application request tracking" does not prevent Apple from continuing to collect data related to user browsing and activities for monetization purposes.

Apple records, tracks, collects and profits from data (including browsing history and activity information), no matter what protective measures or "privacy settings" consumers take to protect their privacy. Even if consumers follow Apple's instructions and turn off "allow app request tracking" and / or "shared [device] analytics" in their privacy controls, Apple will continue to record consumer app usage, app browsing communications and personal information in its proprietary Apple apps, including App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Books and Stocks.

CTOnews.com learned that in support of its allegations, the complaint cited a recent report by Gizmodo, which covered the claims of security researchers at software company Mysk. Earlier this month, researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry claimed that they had found evidence that analytical controls and anti-tracking settings had no significant impact on Apple's data collection in these apps.

For example, according to researchers, App Store apps continue to collect large amounts of usage data in real time, including user clicks, search apps, viewed ads, and how long users view any given application. In addition to these details, Apple is said to be able to collect typical details of the device's fingerprint identification method, including ID number, device model, screen resolution, keyboard language installed and type of Internet connection.

In another example, Mysk researchers say the Stocks app sends Apple a list of stocks that users follow, stocks they view or search for (including timestamps), and records of news articles viewed in the app. The information is said to be sent to a web site separately from iCloud communications needed to synchronize user data across devices.

The researchers found the tracking data using a jailbreak iPhone running iOS 14.6. It is worth noting that although the team found similar iPhone activity on non-jailbreaking phones running iOS 16, the data was encrypted, so it was not possible to determine exactly what was contained. However, this restriction did not prevent the findings of the investigation from leading to litigation.

The lawsuit alleges that "through its widespread and illegal data tracking and collection business, Apple even knows the most private and potentially embarrassing aspects of users' use of the app-regardless of whether they accept Apple's false offer or not." choose to keep such activities secret.

"developers say Apple will track everything users click on when browsing App Store."

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