Apple lets user to see or delete data it has collected

Apple on Wednesday launched an online user tool in the United States and several other countries. In this online user tool, Apple’s user can make changes or delete all the data collected by the company.

Keeping an eye on user’s data safety, Apple has updated its privacy, which was earlier launched this year for users in the European Union in response to the region’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.

Now, Apple’s users in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will see and download all the information that Apple has collected from them. Using this online tool, user can easily make changes to their data, delete and suspend their Apple account or even permanently delete it.

This feature was earlier offered in some parts of the countries, but Apple has bought this for Europe’s data privacy law. The company is likely to launch it through out the world by the end of this year.

The company Apple collects information through its devices such as the iPhone or Apple Watch. It collects detailed data about users, such as whom they email, call or text message and even biometric data such as heart rates and fingerprints. But Apple’s practice has been to keep much of that data on the devices with themselves and encrypt it with the user’s passcode, meaning that Apple does not possess the data and cannot unscramble it if asked to do so by law enforcement officials.

Apple has sought to turn its privacy stance into a business advantage against its technology industry rivals. Chief Executive Tim Cook said that Apple ‘wouldn’t be in this situation’ earlier this year when Facebook Inc came under scrutiny for the misuse of its data by Cambridge Analytica. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, in turn, called Cook’s comments ‘extremely glib’.

Despite its focus on keeping data on devices, Apple does collect and store some data about its users. For example, Apple collects data on users’ reading habits to improve suggestions in its Apple News app, but it says that data is linked to an anonymous identifier, rather than a personal profile and that it is not connected to its other services and can be reset at any time.

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