Apple Looks Into In-Store Education To Boost Privacy Awareness Efforts

Originally established in 2007, Data Privacy Day occurs on 28 January each year. As you can tell from the name, its purpose is to highlight the importance of privacy and data protection.

For a company that strongly believes that privacy is a fundamental human right, it goes without saying that Data Privacy Day is an important date in Apple’s calendar. To mark this year’s occasion, the company has revealed a new addition to its privacy awareness efforts: a dedicated Today at Apple session that solely focused on the privacy features within iPhone.

In case you are not familiar with Today at Apple, it is essentially an educational hands-on session that takes place at Apple Store throughout the world. First launched in 2016 with the opening of its San Francisco’s Union Square branch before being expanded globally in 2017, it covers a multitude of levels from basic how-to with Apple products up to advanced skills such as programming, art creation, and music composition.

Hence, the new session which is called Taking Charge of Your Privacy on iPhone is no different as well. Meant to cover all levels of users, the 30-minute session which made its debut today discusses key privacy and data protection features that have been baked into iPhones such as Mail Privacy Protection, Location Services controls, Safety Check, App Tracking Transparency, and Passkeys.

However, the company did not specify in its announcement whether it has plans to craft a similar privacy-focused educational session for countries that don’t have Apple Store just yet though. In such markets, some Apple Authorised Resellers (AARs) may conduct their own educational session that would have the same spirit as per Today at Apple session.

Taking Malaysia as an example, whereby AARs such as Machines and Switch conduct workshops at certain branches during weekends. So, we reckoned that Apple should look into them as well if the company really wants to relay its message regarding privacy and data protection to more people, especially in countries like ours where the awareness is still quite low.

For now, it seemed that the Privacy section of Apple’s website is the main reference point for markets without an Apple Store. Meanwhile, Apple has also come out with a new 5-minute film in conjunction with this year’s Data Privacy Day, titled A Day In The Life Of An Average Person’s Data:

Featuring British actor Nick Mohammed who portrayed Coach Nate in the critically-acclaimed Apple TV series Ted Lasso, the new film also focused on the privacy and data protection features within the iPhone. It generally correlates typical user activities that might be targeted for data harvesting with how those features could help stop that from happening, albeit in a comedic manner.

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