Breaking down why Apple TVs are privacy advocates’ go-to streaming device

“Just use an Apple TV box and unplug your television from the Internet. “,”.

For those who want to enjoy streaming without sacrificing too much privacy, that is the standard advice you will hear from Ars readers. That recommendation is sound, according to our research and the experts we spoke with, since Apple TVs provide a great deal more privacy than other streaming device manufacturers.

How private are Apple TV boxes, though? ACR, a user-tracking technology used by almost all smart TVs and streaming devices, is not used by Apple TVs, but could that change? What about the apps that Apple TV users use? Could those apps give Apple or advertisers information about you?

This article will explore the unique privacy features of the Apple TV and consider whether consumers should anticipate that the improved privacy and fewer advertisements will last indefinitely.

By default, Apple TV boxes restrict tracking.

Setting up an Apple TV allows you to turn off location tracking, Siri, and sending analytics data to Apple, which is one of the easiest ways to improve privacy. Users are also given multiple chances to examine Apple’s data and privacy policies during setup. Additionally, the boxes’ ability to transmit voice input data to Apple is turned off by default.

To turn off comparable tracking features, users of the majority of other streaming devices must go through several pages of settings, something that most people are unlikely to do. Even for people who are not aware of how intrusive smart devices can be, Apple’s strategy offers a line of defense against snooping.

Third-party app tracking is further complicated on Apple TVs running tvOS 14.5 and later by requiring permission requests before the apps can track users.

By going to the Apple TV settings, users can turn off third-party apps’ ability to request permission for tracking. But by making this setting active by default, Apple could improve privacy even more.

Additionally, users can manage which apps have access to the remote’s microphone, the set-top box’s Bluetooth capabilities, pictures, music, and HomeKit data (if applicable) on the Apple TV.

According to RJ Cross, director of the Public Interest Research Group’s (PIRG) consumer privacy program, “Apple has somewhat less incentive to harvest and monetize incredible amounts of your data because its primary business model isn’t dependent on selling targeted ads.”. “Compared to other tech companies, I personally have more faith in them with my data. “..”.

What if analytics data are shared?

According to Apple, if you consent to your Apple TV sharing analytics data with Apple or app developers, the data will not be personally identifiable. According to Apple, any personally identifiable information gathered is “not logged at all, removed from reports before they’re sent to Apple, or protected by techniques, such as differential privacy,”.

Differential privacy is one of the most popular techniques for data anonymization, adding noise to the collected data. Apple explains how it uses differential privacy in its support documentation (PDF).

Initially, we use local differential privacy on the user’s device to privatize the data. To ensure that Apple’s servers don’t receive clear data, privatization was implemented. The data is sent to Apple via an encrypted channel after device identifiers have been eliminated. IP addresses and other metadata are dropped when the comparably private contributions are ingested by the Apple analysis system. Aggregation is the last step, in which the relevant statistics are calculated from the privatized records and shared with the appropriate Apple teams. Since the ingestion and aggregation phases are carried out in a restricted access setting, Apple employees cannot even access the privatized data in a broad sense.

What if you have an Apple TV and an Apple account?

Regarding Apple accounts, formerly known as Apple IDs, Apple’s privacy policy should also be taken into account.

Although the Apple TV can be used without an Apple account, the support documentation states that you “need” one. Nonetheless, because it makes connecting with other Apple products simpler, users frequently log into their Apple TV boxes using their Apple accounts. A common method of streaming on Apple TV boxes is to use the Apple TV app, which is another reason why someone might connect an Apple TV box to an Apple account.

In its privacy policy, Apple states that it collects “data about your activity on and use of” Apple products, including “app launches within our services,” as well as other usage data. search history, browsing history, and [and] product interaction. “.”.

Transaction information (Apple claims that this includes “data about purchases of Apple products and services or transactions facilitated by Apple, including purchases on Apple platforms”), account information (including email address, devices registered, account status, and age), device information (including serial number and browser type), contact information (including physical address and phone number), and payment information (including bank details) are additional categories of data that Apple may gather from your Apple accounts. It should come as no surprise given the kind of information required to activate an Apple account.

Many Apple TV users can anticipate that Apple will collect additional information about how they use their Apple accounts on other devices, like Macs or iPhones. Nevertheless, Apple understands that all of the information it has gathered about you, such as your iPhone activity, also applies to you as an Apple TV user if you use the same Apple account on several devices.

It might be possible to get around this by keeping several Apple accounts. Apple would have very little information to attribute to you as an owner of an Apple TV if you had an Apple account that was only used for your Apple TV box and you turned off as much of the tracking for your Apple TV hardware and software as possible. It is also possible to use your Apple TV box without an Apple account, but this will prevent you from using one of the main features of the device—the Apple TV app.

data gathering through the Apple TV app.

Although you can download third-party apps like Netflix and Hulu to an Apple TV box, the Apple TV app is probably the best way to watch TV shows and movies on Apple TV boxes. Although the app is required to watch content on the Apple TV+ streaming service, it also encourages usage by centralizing access to the libraries of numerous well-known streaming apps. Therefore, it is essential to comprehend the privacy policy of the Apple TV app in order to assess how private Apple TV activity actually is.

As anticipated, the application needs some of the data it collects in order to function. The app’s privacy policy states that this includes “information about your purchases, downloads, activity in the Apple TV app, the content you watch, and where you watch it in the Apple TV app and in connected apps on any of your supported devices.”. All of that makes sense in order to make sure the app remembers things like the Severance episode you’re watching on different devices.

However, Apple also gathers other information that isn’t required for operation. It claims that in order to enhance the app, it collects information on “features you use (for example, Continue Watching or Library),” content pages you view, how you interact with notifications, and approximate location data (which Apple claims does not identify users).

Additionally, Apple has a policy that allows it to track the terms you search for within the app.

To enhance the models that drive Apple TV, we use search data from Apple TV. The Apple TV search model, for instance, is optimized using aggregate Apple TV search queries.

Compared to other streaming devices that may track your activities and then sell that data to third-party advertisers, this data usage is less invasive. However, some people might be wary of having any of their actions monitored for the benefit of a multitrillion-dollar corporation.

Advertising-related data gathered from the Apple TV app.

Additionally, the Apple TV app automatically records “what you watch, your purchases, subscriptions, downloads, browsing, and other activities in the Apple TV app” in order to recommend content that is tailored to your interests. Apple uses data about you to drive you toward products through content recommendations, which aren’t advertisements in the conventional sense.

Personalized recommendations in the Apple TV app can be turned off, but it’s a little more difficult than you might think because you can’t do it directly from the app. You must choose Apps > TV > Use Play History > Off after accessing the Apple TV settings.

The users who care about their privacy the most might prefer that personalized recommendations were disabled by default. While Apple TV users can choose not to receive personalized content recommendations, “many will not realize they can,” said Darío Maestro, senior legal fellow at the nonprofit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), in an interview with Ars. “..”.

Apple can also display conventional advertisements using the information it collects about you from the Apple TV app. The Apple TV app can track your location if you let your Apple TV box do so. That information may “be used to serve geographically relevant ads,” as stated in the privacy statement of the Apple TV app. However, Apple TV boxes by default do not track location.

Ads are not integrated into Apple’s tvOS. Some TV operating systems, such as Roku OS and LG’s webOS, display advertisements on the home screen and/or when screensavers are displayed, for comparison.

Apple also makes “non-personal data” collected from the Apple TV app available to strategic partners and third-party advertisers.

To help Apple market to consumers, sell advertisements on Apple’s behalf for display on the App Store, Apple News, and Stocks, and supply our advertisers and strategic partners with our non-personal data, we give them access to our products and services.

In order to pay royalties and determine how many people are watching their shows or movies, Apple also gives non-personal data from the Apple TV to third parties, including content owners, “and improve their associated products and services,” according to Apple.

Notes from Apple’s policy.

For instance, in order to help Apple TV strategic partners, like content owners, measure the success of their creative work [and] comply with royalty and accounting requirements, we may share non-personal data about your transactions, viewing activity, and region, as well as aggregated user demographics[,] like age group and gender (which can be deduced from information like your name and salutation in your Apple Account).

An Apple representative who was contacted for comment informed Ars that the app allows users to delete their play history on Apple TV.

Imagine using Siri.

Deactivating Siri during Apple TV setup is simple. However, there is a small privacy cost for those who choose to keep the voice assistant and voice control for Apple TV.

The privacy policy available in the settings of Apple TV boxes states that all Siri requests are automatically routed to Apple’s servers by Apple TV boxes. In order to “Improve Siri and Dictation,” Apple will save your audio data if you choose to use it. According to the policy, audio data won’t be kept if you choose not to.

In every situation, Apple will receive transcripts of your conversations in order to handle your requests, and Apple may keep these records.

Additionally, Apple TV boxes transmit audio and dictation input transcriptions to Apple servers for processing. Apple claims not to store audio, but it might save audio transcriptions.

If you choose to “Improve Siri and Dictation,” Apple claims that your voice request history isn’t connected to your email address or Apple account. However, Apple is evasive about how long it might keep information about voice input made with the Apple TV if you select this option.

The policy states:.

Not linked to your email address or Apple Account, your request history—which includes transcripts and any associated request data—is linked to a random identifier for a maximum of six months. You can keep your request history for up to two years after it is separated from the random identifier after six months. Apple may utilize this information to enhance its Siri, Dictation, Search, and a few other language processing features in its products.

Additionally, Apple might examine this . and a portion of the transcripts of your interactions. may be retained for more than two years in order to continue improving goods and services.

Though it hasn’t always followed through on its pledge, Apple says it won’t use Siri and voice data to create marketing profiles or sell them to outside parties. Apple settled a class-action lawsuit alleging that Siri recorded private conversations and shared them with third parties for targeted advertisements in January, agreeing to pay $95 million. Contractors claimed to have heard private conversations and sex recordings made by Siri in 2019.

Voice request data has been used in dubious ways outside of Apple, such as by corporate employees and in criminal trials. Siri and dictation data are further examples of how an individual’s Apple TV usage may be surreptitiously examined to support Apple’s operations.

automatically identifying content.

According to an Apple representative who spoke to Ars, Apple TVs do not come with automatic content recognition (ACR), which is helpful for privacy activists. However, since ACR is software, Apple may eventually update the software on Apple TV boxes to include it.

According to Sherman Li, the founder of Enswers, the company that originally installed ACR in Samsung TVs, Apple could theoretically incorporate ACR into Apple boxes that customers have already purchased, he told Ars. ACR was added retroactively by Enswers to other streaming devices, such as Samsung and LG smart TVs, years ago. Nielsen now owns Gracenote, which purchased Answers. ).

However, Li clarified that there are generally difficulties when integrating ACR with hardware that people already own.

Everyone thinks that since ACR is software, it can be added anywhere and at any time. However, this isn’t the case due to the architecture of the hardware. In many circumstances, the way the firmware and chipsets—such as SoCs—interact varies.

Li listed several factors that might make it impossible to retroactively add ACR to any kind of streaming hardware, such as “access to video frame buffers, audio streams, networking connectivity, security protocols, operating systems, and app interface communication layers, especially at different levels of the stack in these devices, depending on the implementation.”. “,”.

Li believes that adding ACR to already-purchased Apple TVs would be challenging due to the intricacy of Apple TV boxes. If Apple ever chose to go that route, it would probably be easier to release a new box with ACR.

The devices would be much less private if Apple added ACR to either the new or old Apple TV boxes. This would be a very unpopular move that would remove one of the main attractions of the Apple TV.

“I’ll be less confident in Apple’s ability to keep its privacy pledges the more they slink into the targeted ad space. “You can see Apple TV as a logical next step for advertising sales,” Cross of PIRG stated.

Ironically, Apple has positioned its privacy policies as advantageous for advertisers.

The most secluded streaming device.

With the exception of dumb TVs, which are extremely difficult to locate these days, the streaming devices are currently more private than the great majority of alternatives, though Apple TV boxes still have the technological potential to include intrusive tracking or advertisements. If Apple adheres to its own policies, a large portion of the information it collects ought to be retained internally.

Though Apple does track some tvOS activities, particularly those that occur through Apple accounts, voice interaction, or the Apple TV app, people with serious privacy concerns should be aware of this. Additionally, some advocates think there is potential for improvement even though privacy is prioritized by default in the majority of Apple’s streaming hardware and software settings.

The Maestro of STOP, for instance, stated.

There isn’t any actual law in the US controlling what happens to your data after it gets to Apple’s servers, unlike in the [European Union], where the forthcoming Data Act will establish more precise guidelines on transfers of data produced by smart devices. There is little way for users to confirm those privacy assurances.

According to Maestro, Apple could allay these worries by facilitating security research on smart device software. Maestro stated that “permitting the creation of substitute or altered software that can assess privacy settings could also boost user confidence and better uphold Apple’s public commitment to privacy.”.

There are methods to restrict how much information your Apple TV can give to advertisers. However, Apple may use your activities to inform business decisions and, consequently, financial decisions if you use the Apple TV app.

As one might anticipate from a gadget that has an Internet connection and allows you to stream movies and television series, Apple TV boxes aren’t completely immune to tracking you. However, they continue to be the greatest choice for streaming users looking for devices with fewer advertisements and greater privacy.