Yeah this was probably some rank and file employee that was trying to cash in on that sweet patent filing bonus Ford probably provides

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It is a business risk for Apple to mine data on data they have explicitly confirmed in this ToS to be e2e encrypted and private.

If we’re going that far, none of the Broadcom/Qualcomm/Exynos/Snapdragon chips have open source firmware. Additionally google services are all closed source and proprietary.

Backdoors exist but all phones have backdoors in them and should be assumed they are exploited by state actors.

From a privacy standpoint, on stock mobile OS, Apple is the lead. I certainly won’t disagree that there are custom roms without google services that are superior though.

Generally Apple apps e2e encrypt your data and can not be read/mined by them. There are caveats such as Siri (anonymized voice clips uploaded for example) or (iirc) Apple News. Things like notes, fitness/health, or iMessage are your data.