A few new details have emerged about how Apple's differential privacy feature will work for customers in iOS 10. The feature will allow Apple to collect a lot of data without compromising user privacy and will apparently require people to opt-in to it in order for data to be collected. Additionally, according to this new report, Apple will be focused on collecting data from a small number of areas at first.
From Recode:
As for what data is being collected, Apple says that differential privacy will initially be limited to four specific use cases: New words that users add to their local dictionaries, emojis typed by the user (so that Apple can suggest emoji replacements), deep links used inside apps (provided they are marked for public indexing) and lookup hints within notes.
A more conservative rollout for differential privacy, focusing on a few key areas, isn't surprising. Apple is taking a similar stance as it opens Siri to third-party developers. That feature is limited to a handful of different app types.
Recode also reports that Apple hasn't been collecting any of this data previously, and affirms that differential privacy will indeed be new with iOS 10. The system is currently in developer beta, with a public release set for this fall.
