Apple highlights Safari's privacy features against online surveillance in new ad

Imagine this: you’re having a casual chat with a friend about planning a vacation to Bali. The next thing you know, your phone starts showing you ads for Bali resorts and tour packages. Creepy, right? This isn’t just a coincidence. Our phones are always listening, their microphones picking up snippets of our conversations even when we are not using them. Voice-activated assistants are always on high alert, waiting for those wake words. This constant eavesdropping means that our private discussions are never truly private, raising questions about who’s listening and what they’re doing with our data.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Every click, every search, every site we visit is tracked and recorded. Cookies follow us around the web, building profiles of our habits and preferences. With a few clever tricks, cybercriminals can break in and steal sensitive information, like passwords and credit card numbers. It’s like having a thief in your house at night, going through your belongings, and it’s happening every time we go online. 

To make users aware of these dangers, Apple has launched a global privacy campaign, illustrating how iPhones protect users from constant surveillance in a video called ‘Flock.’

Created by TBWA/Media Arts Lab and directed by Ivan Zacharias, the two-minute film resembles a scene from “The Birds” (1963), featuring a depiction where bird-like surveillance cameras chase and attack people to monitor their browsing data. As more cameras join the flock, the surveillance becomes scarier, until iPhone users switch to Safari for privacy protection.

The campaign highlights Apple's initiatives asking users to opt out of third-party app tracking and prevent dangers by using Safari. Over recent years, Apple has actively worked on combating ‘fingerprinting’ on its devices, a method utilised by companies to identify users. These privacy measures pose challenges for advertisers who rely on such data to target and refine ads for specific audiences. 

Flock will be rolled out on social media, cinema, YouTube and other platforms thereby showcasing that Safari as a browser is private.