As spotted by Engadget, Apple has announced that, in the future, users all over the globe will be able to access the data that the international empire of tech has collected on them. This appears to have been spurred on by Europe’s implementation of the GDPR rules, a data transparency initiative that, in that part of the world at least, includes Apple.
GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation – is more than just companies contacting you about subscription emails and changes to their privacy laws. A European Union regulation, it demands that businesses that handle personal data must, by default, use systems that put user privacy first. None of this data can be processed without the explicit consent of the owner of the information, and it can be accessed in portable form by the data’s owner if they request it.
There’s a lot more to it than that, but those are the basics. Adopted back in April 2016, it becomes enforceable across the entire European Union – and a few additional European nations not party to it – on May 25 of this year.
Apple, a company that obviously operates within the European Union, must abide by these rules too. They’ve recently updated their privacy governance guidelines accordingly.
As reported by The Verge, however, it looks like they’ll soon roll this out worldwide, within the next few months or so. This means that your Apple ID data, as well as data you’ve synced through various apps and processes, including Apple Music and the iCloud, will be available.
It’ll take about a week to get all the data together, though, before you can see it, which gives you an insight into just how much data is collected by Apple. You can also download it in installments if that’s your bag.
If you’re currently based in the European Union, and you’d like to see what data you’ve got, you can head on here to their privacy portal. All you have to do is log in with your Apple ID, and voila, you’ve got access to it.
If, for whatever reason, you’re unhappy with the data they’re collecting, you can opt to permanently delete your account, which wipes out everything, from your iCloud backups to any iBooks you’ve downloaded.
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