Privacy is a fundamental human right. At Apple, it’s also one of our core values. Your devices are important to so many parts of your life. What you share from those experiences, and who you share it with, should be up to you. We design Apple products to protect your privacy and give you control over your information. It’s not always easy. But that’s the kind of innovation we believe in.
Latest from Apple on privacy.
Apple’s layers of security and App Store protections keep you in control of your data and help shield you from malware.
Intelligent Tracking Prevention helps stop advertisers that follow you from site to site.
Safari
Some websites allow hundreds of different data collection companies to watch you, build a profile of you, and serve you ads as you browse the web. Intelligent Tracking Prevention in Safari uses on-device machine learning to help block those trackers. And you can get a snapshot of all the cross-site trackers Safari is blocking by visiting your Privacy Report in the Safari toolbar.
Advertisers can also create a “fingerprint” of your device to target you based on characteristics like your browser configuration, and fonts and plug-ins you’ve installed. To help prevent this, Safari has built-in fingerprinting defense, which shares a simplified system profile with websites you visit. Making it even more difficult for data companies to identify you.
Maps makes your location history, history.
The Maps app doesn’t associate your data with your Apple ID, and Apple doesn’t keep a history of where you’ve been.
Maps
Where you go says a lot about you. Maps delivers a great experience without Apple knowing which stores, neighborhoods, or clinics you visit. And because Maps doesn’t include a sign-in, where you go isn’t associated with your Apple ID at all.
Personalized features, like locating your parked car, are created right on your device. And data used to improve search terms is not associated with your identity. Instead, that information is based on random identifiers that are constantly changing.
Photos lets you choose who has the full picture.
The Photos app uses machine learning to organize photos right on your device. So you don’t need to share them with Apple or anyone else.
Photos
Your photo and video albums are full of precious moments, friends, and your favorite things. Apple devices are designed to give you control over those memories.
Photos is also designed so that the face recognition and scene and object detection — which power features like For You, Memories, Sharing Suggestions, and the People album — happen on device instead of in the cloud. In fact, the A13 and A14 Bionic chips perform over 100 billion operations per photo to recognize faces and places without ever leaving your device. And when apps request access to your photos, you can share just the images you want — not your entire library.
Messages are only seen by who you send them to.
Apple can’t read your iMessages while they’re being sent between you and the person you’re texting.
Messages
From inside jokes to invitations, a lot of life happens in text and video chats. Every blue-bubble message, picture, Animoji, and video is encrypted while being sent between devices.
Smart suggestions in Messages, like pulling up photos to send based on who you’re messaging, are all done on your device.
Health keeps your records under wraps.
You control which information goes into the Health app and who you share it with.
Health
From your heart rate to your menstrual cycle, apps and devices for your health can give you insight into some of your most personal details. With the Health app, you’re in charge of what information you’d like to include, what not to, and who has access to it.
All of your data is encrypted and only accessible with your passcode, Touch ID, or Face ID. So however you use the Health app, you’re always in control of your data.
App Store shows you what’s in store for your data.
Easy-to-read Privacy Nutrition Labels on the App Store help you choose apps based on how they use your data and whether they track you.
App Store
Every one of the more than 1.8 million apps on the App Store is required to follow strict privacy guidelines and report how it uses your data. And every app is rigorously reviewed by a team of experts at Apple.
When you’re checking out an app, you’ll see its Privacy Nutrition Label to help you decide if it works for you. Apps you choose to download need your permission to access information like your photos or location — and you can always change your mind about what you share. iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5 or later require developers to get your permission before tracking your activity across other companies’ apps and websites for ads or data brokers.