The Data Human Index in Practice: Apple
Apple scores 12 out of 20. That puts it in the Developing band, the same band as Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok. The scoring was done on apple.com/ca.
Let that sit for a second.
The brand that made privacy a marketing pillar. The brand that built App Tracking Transparency. The brand whose CEO has said, on record, that “privacy is a fundamental human right”.
Developing.
Here’s what the scoring found.
Apple’s privacy policy scores at senior high school reading level on Hemingway Editor, Grade 12. Not plain language, but noticeably more accessible than most. This is the dimension where Apple exceeds expectations.
Human contact is accessible in three clicks via Apple Support. The tone is considered and it reads like someone thought about the person receiving it.
The privacy policy takes three clicks from the homepage. Not buried, but not immediate. A mid-range score for a brand that leads with privacy in almost every product launch.
Apple’s Data and Privacy tools are genuinely impressive: download your data, delete your account, request corrections, and transfer your data, all available in over 240 countries. But every one of those tools requires you to sign in to your Apple Account. Login-gated controls where no guest alternative exists cap at a 2, regardless of how good the tools are behind the login.
See below. This is the one worth sitting with.
Then there’s Consent.
Apple’s website shows no cookie banner. Not in Canada, and not even in Germany, one of the strictest GDPR jurisdictions in the EU. At first glance that looks like a 4. A brand so committed to privacy it has engineered away the need to ask.
But Apple’s own cookie policy states clearly that the site uses cookies to understand how visitors interact with it and to assess the effectiveness of advertisements. That’s non-essential tracking, the kind that typically requires consent under privacy law. Yet there’s no visible explanation for why there is no banner, and no proactive communication to visitors about what is or isn’t being collected. To find out, you’d need to read the buried cookie policy and reach your own conclusion.
That’s the “almost”.
The tools are real, the design is thoughtful, and the intention appears genuine. But Apple’s entire identity is built on privacy, and it leaves its own visitors without a clear answer about what’s being collected before they even click anything.
The full breakdown is on Behind the Scores, alongside Facebook and TikTok: every dimension, every score, and every piece of evidence behind it. There’s also an interactive tool where you can score any brand yourself in about twenty minutes.