Hawley Asks Apple To Stop Tracking iPhone Data

Do you have an iPhone? Apple is tracking your data, and Senator Josh Hawley is fighting for your privacy. He sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking him to voluntarily provide Apple customers with a “Do Not Track” option.

Hawley recently introduced the Do Not Track Act, which would create a system similar to the “Do Not Call” list, but for data tracking.

Apple’s App Store does not stop developers from hiding software in their apps designed to track users and harvest massive amounts of data unrelated to app functionality. In his letter, Senator Hawley notes that Cook has been highly critical of such practices in the past, famously writing, “Let’s be clear: you never signed up for that.”

In his letter, Hawley writes, “I am optimistic that Congress will give my bipartisan bill serious consideration, but you have the power to provide these protections to your customers even before Congress acts. If your company is serious about protecting privacy, you should give your customers the power to block all companies from collecting or sharing any data that is not indispensable to the companies’ online services.”

Hawley ends his letter by noting that Cook has a chance to “make good on [his] promise to be an industry leader” by implementing the principles of the Do Not Track Act.

Read the full letter here.