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Comment by canuckintime | Hacker News Reader

So how to request Apple not collect this data?

You have to tell your iphone to stop sending it.

Depending on your iphone's settings, and what data you don't want Apple collecting, that could mean anything from turning off iCloud to not using iTunes and the App Store.

Basically, any app is likely giving Apple data on you. (Well I take that back. Apps will give some company data on you. But they won't necessarily give it to Apple. Obviously for full and complete privacy you would need to turn off any google, facebook and amazon stuff as well. Also any ancillary apps, like mileage meters, or health and wellness type stuff. A lot of games too now I think about it.)

> health and wellness type stuff

This is very crucial and I really don't see any alternative services to the ones like Strava and RunKeeper for iOS.

Even an app that does the job w/o any social features would do (in fact I never use the social feature aspect of these apps)

Have you looked at apps by David Smith? Pedometer++, Workouts++, etc. They integrate with Apple's Health app, but don't sync anything on their own. And Apple's health app is encrypted to your device.

Thanks. I installed Workouts++. I will try to use it to record my runs and how activity data is presented. Though I am not yet sure I can use it w/o an Apple watch.

The default workout app on the Apple Watch doesn’t do any social stuff unless you try really hard to do so, and even then it’s very minimal sharing (no maps etc)

1. stop using icloud for synching and storing stuff (since it goes through Apple and is not E2E encrypted as your devices don't share keys)

2. stop using publication stuff (gamecenter) since that's literally public information Apple broadcasts for you

3. that's about it, the rest is various accounts information e.g. your appstore/itunes purchases, your retail stuff, repairs, … basically your files at Apple, the only way to request that Apple does not generate it is to delete your account (which the portal lets you, there's an option to nuke your account entirely and permanently) and stop interacting with Apple entirely, or at least in such a way that they can link things together (e.g. appleid when purchasing devices, that kind of stuff)

> stop using icloud for synching and storing stuff

Just a small correction: although most of iCloud is definitely not E2E encrypted, a small portion, iCloud Keychain, is. It's a great way to sync passwords and secure notes across devices.

Synced iMessage/SMS history ("Messages in the Cloud") is also E2E encrypted - unless the user enables iCloud Backup on an iOS device, which must keep a decryption key in escrow to support restore scenarios.

This is largely data that you have provided to Apple (account information, purchase history, etc) along with a few iCloud logs, and data that you choose to store in iCloud. Apple doesn't really do any 'collection' of data. I know this is kinda hard to believe, and goes against pretty much everything their competitors do, but it's the case.

TLDR; if you're not actively asking Apple to store data for you, they probably aren't.

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