Can apple be trusted though?

There may come a day soon where they aren't as profitable & can always adjust to selling their users data to stay on top 

2bithits

So then the premise that I'm reading here is that collecting anonymous data is fine, but collecting person information is bad because the data can get leaked.

Is it an admission that Apple doesn't collect personal information but happily collects and sells anonymous data?

Anonymous data is easy to deanonymize and/or use maliciously in the way I mentioned above. I spoke to a data scientist a few years ago and he was explaining how a company like Facebook, for example, can build an anonymous profile about you using anonymous data and even with GDPR and European privacy laws, this data is not considered personal information. Then if you delete your account and recreate another, they will very quickly be able to identify your behaviour as a match for that anonymous model and you'll wonder why Facebook seems to know you so well all already.

It's one thing to talk to a friend or random person on the street and tell them you've just come from X shopping center, it's another to tell an agent that tracks people for a living and fishes for information in order to make money from it -- even if you don't know the person and they ask no personal questions. I can imagine people doing it on the street if there is an incentive like cupcakes.

Online, we don't get to know how our data is used, but worse still, we don't get to see what data is being shared.

I guess we still aren't ready to have full disclosure and full transparency.

It depends where you buy... on the more shady marketplaces you can buy full individual profiles (emails, social graph, interests) so  you can e.g. specifically target  them with your ads or scams. 

nout

Well it's not though, the data that is sold is "anonymous". That means they aren't selling "Ellie's" data, but instead the data of her and her group of friends, showing companies where to be to maximise their spending, telling companies what to broadcast to get them scared, outraged, and passionate about their products.

Let's get it right, let's make the people understand why privacy is important, how we are being controlled and how we are affecting each other too while we are at it.