Apple privacy ad personifies web trackers as overly-obsessed stalkers

Privacy: Though just about every tech company in the world tracks you to some extent, Apple has always prided itself on limiting those practices to the bare minimum. Time and time again Apple has championed the cause of data privacy, even objecting to unlocking the phones of alleged criminals to avoid setting a dangerous precedent for its users.

Apple is still a corporation at the end of the day, and it's not as if they never do anything anti-consumer (right to repair, anyone?). But where privacy is concerned, iPhones are often the better option than much of the competition (not taking into account any other key considerations like price, value, hardware configuration, or customizability).

That point was hammered home recently with the launch of Apple's long-awaited App Tracking Transparency feature for iOS 14.5. The tool allows users to block apps from tracking them if they so desire, and it has already been enabled by a whopping 96 percent of users if recent analytics are to be believed.

As you'd expect, Apple is pretty proud of the functionality's success, and has decided to make the feature a focal point of its latest ad, aptly called "Tracked" -- see that above.

Throughout the ad, the user gathers more and more stalkers (trackers), each more invasive than the last. They dig through his personal belongings at home, swipe copies of his financial documents and stare over his shoulder at his phone screen. Earlier in the video, a barista even forces his way into the user's taxi.

In the end, our protagonist denies data collection permissions, and all of the stalkers evaporate on the spot. It's an amusing, relatable, and remarkably well-directed ad, so we recommend giving it a watch if you haven't already -- even if you aren't an Apple fan.

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