Apple’s stance on protecting its customers’ privacy is well-known and well-documented, with its company’s CEO Tim Cook publicly speaking up against others such as Facebook during the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In fact in what seems like a very un-Apple like move, the company has bought an ad to troll its competitors ahead of CES 2019.
In the image above taken and shared by Engadget’s Chris Velazco, it seems that Apple has purchased ad space on a building where they say, “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone”. Not only is this presumably shade thrown at other tech companies who seem more than happy to exploit our privacy for financial gain, but it also is a nod towards the popular saying of, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” which is where CES 2019 is being held at.
Apple has been pretty vocal when it comes to opposing laws and requests that could compromise the user’s privacy. There was a time when law enforcement agencies were pressuring Apple into creating a backdoor feature in iOS. This would allow law enforcement to gain access to a suspect’s phone and its contents without needing the suspect, but Apple had refused claiming that it could be exploited by the bad guys as well.
This has resulted in law enforcement turning to the use of outside help who has created software and devices designed to bypass the iPhone’s protections, although it feels very much like a game of cat and mouse with Apple constantly patching its software to try and keep up with such exploits.