Cyber-Consent

      Want to protect your privacy online? Apple plans to help. Its rivals are not happy about it. 

     Google and Facebook are known as tech giants, but truly they are in the business of collecting information about you and selling it to other companies. These companies want to make sure that the online ads they purchase will actually convince you to buy their products. They pay Google and Facebook for extremely detailed deets about what you like, what you're like, and what you do on the web. How is this data collected? Google and Facebook (and their app-building partners) track your activities all over cyberspace. That's why, if you browse 1800flowers.com on a Monday, ads for bouquet delivery will infest your feed all week. 

     Enter Apple, a tech company that makes its money by selling tech. Soon it will upgrade the operating system that runs iPhones. As part of this new OS, apps will be required to ask your permission to "track you across apps and websites run by other companies." It is expected that most users will not give such permission. That would surely put a dent in Mark Zuckerberg's profit margins. 

     Apple's not making this change because it loves the ACLU. It has merely found a way to look virtuous while kneecapping the competition, which is a great way to boost its staggering $2,000,000,000,000 valuation. Still, what a nice change of pace to see a company seeking profit by working to protect our privacy, rather than annihilate it.