Apple 'Flock': Still scary

'The Birds' application gets an update....

Your response to this ad will vary massively according to: a) whether you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 horror/thriller movie 'The Birds', which focuses on a series of sudden and unexplained violent bird attacks on people in California; b) your smartphone usage; c) your appreciation of the creative work involved in the ad; d) your level of concern over individual privacy in the digital age.?

In it, Apple makes a compelling case for privacy on its iPhone through a two-minute horror scenario where the superhero able to blast away the threat turns out to be?company browser Safari.

What strikes many will be the point that private browsing as advertised here still doesn't protect an iPhone user from the company itself, in this case Apple.

A 2022 report by the New York Times Wirecutter publication tracks the use of data collection since the introduction of smartphones in 2007 and how immensely complex it can be even to set up your smartphone with some level of privacy. And it acknowledges that:

"anyone’s activity can be accessed by the company hosting the data, in some fashion, even if it’s encrypted on the servers. This is how a company can decrypt data to respond to government requests."

Fear of advertising attacks looks quaint in light of how data can be collected, shared, sold, and used nowadays.?

Is this one of those ads which is oblivious to the irony, having a laugh at consumer gullibility, or actually misleading?

ends

For more thought-provoking contextualisation of social issues as seen through the latest ads, head over to ADDS at Addvertising.org!