Apple, Microsoft Tout Their Privacy Policies To Get Positive PR

jfruh writes: Apple hasn't changed its privacy policy in more than a year — but that didn't stop the company from putting up a glossy website explaining it in layman's terms. Microsoft too has been touting its respect for its users's privacy. This doesn't represent any high-minded altruism on those companies' parts, of course; it's part of their battle against Google, their archrival that offers almost all of its services for free and makes its money mining user data.

Comments

Re:MS? Privacy? Direct lies now company policy?

[Solandri]

My primary email address is on a domain I own. Whenever I give my email address to a company, I create a new alias of the form company@mydomain.com. That makes it easy for me to drop an email alias if I start getting spam on it. To date I have just shy of 500 aliases. I've had to delete the email aliases for a few minor companies, but all the others have been spam-free - I've only received emails from the companies themselves. With two exceptions. microsoft@mydomain.com and adobe@mydomain.com have gotten unsolicited mail from third parties, indicating they sold my email address.

Re:Why not both

[Zontar The Mindless]

I have two thoughts on this. First, Apple's business model is fundamentally different from google's, and it makes sense for apple to point out the benefits of their business model at every opportunity. Second, I suspect that Tim Cook is extraordinarily sensitive to privacy issues, and one could hypothesize that it may have to do with growing up gay in Alabama in the 60s.

I recently caved in and bought my wife a Macbook Pro.

I've been wanting for years to get her off Windows, and my chances of ever getting her on Linux are slim to none. I finally decided that, as little love as I have for Apple, I distrust Apple less than I distrust Microsoft. Once we get her data copied over from her old machine so I can nuke the drive, our home will be Windows-free*.

*(Other than the Win7 instance I very occasionally run in a VM for testing stuff related to my job.)

Thank you, Windows 10 and forced upgrades, for finally getting me off the fence!