Snowden effect has Apple, Google take precautions.
By Dileep Thekkethi
BANGALORE: After Edward Snowden opened the Pandora’s Box on snooping, smartphone users had their suspicion about premium brands in protecting their privacy. After Snowden’s revelation many tech giants, including Google and Apple, came up with clarifications to instil confidence in the users.
Now Apple and Google has officially announced that all devices running on the latest operating systems, iOS 8 and Android L will feature automatic encryption.
Both Android and iOS have been providing encryption for quite some time, but many users were oblivious about the encryption facility and didn’t enable it on their smartphones.
Apple’s official statement claimed that even the company officials will not be able to decode the encrypted data as they themselves do not have access to the passwords used by the users for encrypting.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple posted a message in the official Apple website which read “At Apple, your trust means everything to us. That’s why we respect your privacy and protect it with strong encryption, plus strict policies that govern how all data is handled.”
Tim Cook took this opportunity to hit at Google saying that “We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don’t “monetize” the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.”
Shortly after this came the reply from Google’s spokesman: “For over three years, Android has offered encryption, and keys are not stored off of the device, so they cannot be shared with law enforcement. As part of our next Android release, encryption will be enabled by default out of the box, so you won’t even have to think about turning it on.”
It was Blackberry that first came up with the concept of automatic encryption and both Apple and Google are just following the footsteps of Blackberry, which is now struggling to stay alive.
Tim Cook had to take this strong position regarding Apple’s privacy after the leak of celebrity nude photos that went viral, last month. The alleged privacy breach in Apple’s iCloud storage service affected actress Jennifer Lawrence, other celebrities
Towards the end of his statement Tim Cook said: “I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.”
The introduction of default encryption by Apple and Google will hit hard on law enforcing agencies as the companies no longer have to divulge the privacy details of the users.
The new automatic encryption will protect personal data such as photos, messages emails, email attachments, contacts, history, iTunes and Google Play content, notes and reminders.