What you need to know
- Apple is being sued for not properly disclosing it uses third-party companies for iCloud storage.
- The lawsuit argues that Apple should be forthright with this information during the set-up process.
- The suit was filed in California by two customers.
Apple is being sued by two customers who argue that when they signed up for iCloud services, it did not properly disclose that their information could be stored on third-party cloud services. Thereby, it commited breach of contract, false advertising and violated California's Unfair Competition Law.
First reported by ZDNet, the suit was filed by Apple users Andrea M. Williams and James Stewart, who have been using iCloud services since 2015, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
Apple initially only mentions that "When iCloud is enabled, your content will be automatically sent to and stored by Apple." However, upon further inspection of the iOS security guide, Apple confirms that it does use Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform alongside its own servers to store encrypted chunks of the files.
Here's what the complaint argues:
"The selection of a cloud storage provider is a significant and material consideration, as it involves entrusting all of a user's stored data—including sensitive information like photographs, documents of all kinds, and e-mail content—to be stored by the cloud storage provider. Thus, users have an interest in who is offering this storage and taking custody of their data."
Aside from the main complaint that Apple isn't forthright with using third-party cloud services, the complaint also takes umbrage with paying an "Apple premium" for iCloud storage because of the trust they had in the Apple brand.
Apple, for its part, has been aggressively expanding its data servers with big investments.
It's unclear how much validity the suit has as Apple does reveal the fact it uses third-party services for iCloud. This might lead to the ongoing argument about how accessible user agreements are.
