So the common understanding in this sub would be that Apple is equally bad as other companies, of course. But Apple’s marketing Kool-Aid is still convincing for a lot of people. They are expensive so that’s why they won’t sell your data, they are a hardware company, that’s what they say.

That’s why I’d like to know myself, why exactly it is not true, and give it to other people as proof.

To narrow it down, I am talking about selling your personal data to advertisers and maybe leaks, not about sharing the data with the government.

What evidence there is to say that Apple doesn’t care about your privacy too, same as other companies, e.g. Google or Microsoft? Or maybe there is some actual evidence for the opposite?

I recently exercised my rights under GDPR and requested a copy of all the personal data Apple holds about me.

The results were honestly surprising. After years of using Apple services across multiple devices, they only provided about 4 MB of fairly generic data, mostly App Store downloads, metadata about my devices, and some basic account activity. Nothing particularly sensitive or alarming.

For example, despite using the Maps app regularly for navigation, there was absolutely no record of my routes or searches. From what I understand, this is because Apple processes location data locally on-device and uses random identifiers that aren’t tied to my Apple ID.

Likewise, there was no trace of my Siri interactions.

It's also worth noting here that iCloud content is not included in this copy, since that's information I voluntarily upload, and of course, everything is encrypted with Advance Data Protection.

I found the whole process quite interesting and came away genuinely impressed by how little Apple seems to collect about me.