Anyone who follows me knows that I am an advocate for #NoConsentNoTracking. On the other hand, Brian Clifton is one of the few people for whom I have the greatest respect. Curious? Keep reading! In fact, he is one of the few people in the #digitalanalytics & #digitalmarketing industry with whom I have regular conversations. We exchange ideas and sometimes respectfully disagree. I find his views of “privacy jihadist” a bit harsh, while he might find my views on #NoConsentNoTracking rather “radical.” But in the end, I think we’re generally 98% in agreement. That’s the case here. In fact, we’re 100% in agreement. Brian just shared his take on the Gizmodo article “Apple Is Tracking You Even When Its Own Privacy Settings Say It’s Not, New Research Says” (put those keywords together and you’ve got a pretty good click bait title!) That article was re-shared by Brave Software with a similar headline. Enough preamble: —I chose the #Apple ecosystem primarily because of the quality of the products, but now also because of the trust I have in how Apple handles my data; —IMHO, the article implies that ANY data collection is bad. Yet Apple does exactly what it says: it does not SHARE data with anyone—I would qualify that by adding, “for purposes other than providing the service”; —another “proof” of this “research” demonstrates how a VPN is showing some requests are sent to the IP range 95.101.184.0-95.101.187.255. These are the Akamai edge servers. They imply that no addresses outside of Apple should be contacted. Again IMHO, there might be nothing unusual about this; —However, the term “sharing” can be interpreted as “the device will not share anything with anyone, including Apple”—I think that’s how these researchers interpreted it . . . which I think is wrong and misleading; —of course, in order to function, an iOS or OSX device must regularly communicate a lot of info to Apple—including personal data. Whether it’s the Apple Store, AppleTV, Music, Book, or Stocks, they all have to receive data—and you’re authenticated when that happens. Behind each of these data exchanges, there’s a valid reason: to provide the service in the first place, and usually with personalization; —even a jailbreak phone will exchange a lot of data, if only to provide OS & app updates, notifications and the like. The “evidence” presented by these researchers shows endpoint queries within the Apple ecosystem and panics because fingerprinting *is* possible. Doh! I have a lot of respect for Brave—my browser of choice—but echoing this Gizmodo article creates a lot of confusion by misjudging what is really an invasion of #privacy vs. the data exchange needed to provide the functionality users expect. I might be wrong—I’m happy to read your thoughts!