This review explains Apple’s Privacy Policy in plain language, for iPhone, iPad, and Mac households, including parents and older adults. It was checked on September 23, 2026. The policy was updated July 30, 2025. Product-specific notices, such as a feature that asks for data inside an app, were not each opened. This is not legal advice.
Primary source: Apple Privacy Policy.
Snapshot
- Describes how Apple collects, uses, and shares personal data. Feature-specific notices sit on top of this policy.
- Precise location is limited to services such as Find My, or where you agree.
- Apple says it does not sell personal data, including as California and Nevada define sale, and does not “share” it as California defines that word.
- Apple says your private personal data is not used to train its foundational AI models. Public web pages are crawled by Applebot.
- A child account requires a parent to review a family disclosure and give verifiable consent.
What they collect
The policy lists location as precise only to support services such as Find My, or where you agree for region-specific services, plus coarse location. Fitness details are collected where you choose to share them. Apple may also receive data from another person, for example if someone sends you a gift card or shares content with you, or if you direct a carrier to share account data for activation.
Who gets the data
Apple says it may share personal data with affiliated companies, service providers acting for Apple, partners, developers, and publishers, or others at your direction. It says it does not share personal data with third parties for their own marketing purposes. Service providers are obligated to handle personal data for Apple’s tasks, such as processing, storage, and delivery.
Apple’s advertising platform may show ads on the App Store, Apple News, Stocks, and the Apple TV app, depending on location. The policy says that platform “does not track you,” meaning it does not link user or device data from Apple’s apps with user or device data from third parties for targeted advertising or measurement, and does not share user or device data with data brokers.
Easy to miss
- Find My is a precise-location service. If a family member is on a shared location circle, that is a choice inside Find My, not a hidden clause in this policy. The policy names Find My as a reason precise location is used.
- Personalized Ads can be turned off. The policy says disabling them opts the Apple Account out of receiving interest-targeted ads from Apple’s platform in those apps. This review did not confirm the factory default of that switch.
- A school-managed Apple Account is created by the school, not by the parent. The parent path and the school path are different.
- Privacy requests generally require signing in at privacy.apple.com so Apple can verify identity.
New technology
Apple uses Applebot, a web crawler, “to power features such as search and as a source for our foundational AI models.” It crawls information that is publicly available on the internet. Apple says it has measures to reduce personal data collected, makes no attempt to connect crawled data to an individual Apple user, and does not build profiles about individuals from it. The policy states: “Your private personal data is not used to train our foundational AI models.”
To opt out of that processing as an individual, the policy points to the Apple Intelligence Privacy Inquiries form. That form was not submitted for this review. Research datasets that contain images or voices are mentioned separately, and Apple says those are acquired under applicable law and are not the same sentence as the private-data training ban.
Kids and families
Apple treats a child as under 13, or the equivalent age set by law where you live. Certain services require a child Apple Account. A parent must review the Family Privacy Disclosure for Children and provide verifiable parental consent. If Apple learns a child’s data was collected without appropriate authorization, it says the data will be deleted as soon as possible. Parents exercise the child’s privacy rights by signing in to that child’s account at privacy.apple.com.
Older adults
Account and privacy tools require the Apple Account password. Set up a recovery contact or a trusted family member before a password is lost. Apple says it does not use algorithms or profiling to make a decision that would significantly affect you without a chance for human review. That is a useful limit, and it is not a promise that a scammer calling “from Apple” is real. Apple Support contact paths are listed on the policy page. Do not install remote-control software because a caller says they are Apple.
What you can turn off
- Review location permission for each app in the phone’s settings. Precise location for Find My is a feature, not something this policy says is always on for every app.
- Disable Personalized Ads if you do not want Apple’s own ad platform to target by interest. The policy says this opts the Apple Account out of those ads.
- For Apple Intelligence processing described above, use the Apple Intelligence Privacy Inquiries form linked from the policy.
- For a child, create a child Apple Account and complete the Family Privacy Disclosure. Do not hand over an adult Apple ID.
What this means for you
Among the policies reviewed on September 23, 2026, Apple’s is one of the tighter ones: no sale, no sharing with third parties for their own marketing, and a direct statement that private personal data is not used to train foundational models. The family issues that remain are Find My location sharing, Personalized Ads, and making sure a child has a child account rather than a shared adult login.
Does Apple sell personal data?
The policy says Apple does not sell your personal data, including as sale is defined in Nevada and California, and does not share it as California defines that term.
Is my iPhone data used to train Apple’s AI?
The policy says private personal data is not used to train foundational AI models. Public web pages crawled by Applebot are a separate source. If a specific feature shows its own data notice, read that notice too. Those in-app notices were not all opened for this review.
This is not legal advice. Checked September 23, 2026. The policy date on the page was July 30, 2025.