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There's a dichotomy between what Apple says about privacy and some of its actions. On the one hand, the company uses end-to-end encryption for iMessage and Facetime, and embraces on-device processing for a lot of its AI features. On the other hand, it's hard to ignore the fact that Apple collects a fair bit of your data to improve its services, which are an increasingly significant part of its revenue. From small things like using location data to improve Apple Maps, to collecting your information to show ads on the App Store, there are examples of data collection everywhere.
While you can do a lot to reduce data collected by third parties on your iPhone, it's hard to escape Apple's own data collection. Apple is fairly transparent about this, but of late there have been some examples of the company enabling certain types of data collection by default. This should ideally be opt-in, and fortunately, you can manually disable some of this.
Before you go ahead with that, you should be aware that if you're using an iPhone, there's only so much of Apple's data collection that you can escape. You're using an Apple device running the company's operating system, where you have very limited control over first-party data collection. This isn't like using a Mac, where a firewall lets you block even Apple's own apps from phoning home. Still, Apple offers some control over the kinds of data that's collected, and you can flip a few switches to reduce that.
Reduce Siri's data collection
If the recent Siri spying settlement is anything to go by, you should keep an eye on the data collected by the voice assistant. To get started, go to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri and go through the options on the page. If you don't want to use Siri at all, go to Type & Talk to Siri and select Off, then disable Press Side Button for Siri. On compatible iPhones, disable Type to Siri. Once you've disabled all possible toggles, iOS will ask if you really want to turn off Siri, so go ahead and tap Turn Off Siri.
Next, go to the previous page and select Siri & Dictation History and select Delete Siri & Dictation History to clear all records of Siri requests from Apple's servers. To completely remove all related data from Apple servers, however, you'll need to disable Dictation as well. You'll find this option in General > Keyboards.
You may even disable some features in the Suggestions section to reduce the number of Siri suggestions you get while using your iPhone.
Turn off Apple Intelligence
There are very few AI features that work totally offline. Even Apple Intelligence sends a fair bit of your data to Apple's servers. Even though Apple Intelligence encrypts your data, it relies on phoning home to function correctly. If you'd rather avoid this, you can turn off Apple Intelligence by going to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri and disabling the toggle next to Apple Intelligence.
Stop Apple from collecting your search data
Apple also collects search terms that you use in Safari, Siri, and Spotlight Search in order to improve your search results. Although Apple says this data isn't linked to you, it remains another form of optional data collection. You can disable this by going to Settings > Search and disabling Help Apple Improve Search.
Check Apple's location access
Some Apple services, such as Find My, require your location information to function correctly. If Apple can't see your location, Maps won't work, and it can't help you find your device if it gets lost or stolen. However, there are many other cases where Apple doesn't need access to your location at all. You can check and disable Apple's location access by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services. Scroll through the list of apps and disable location access for every Apple app that doesn't need it.
You'll see Apple's explanation for why it "needs" access to your location for each app. Apps such as Apple Watch Workout need location access to track workout routes, but others such as App Store could do without it. (Apple says the App Store needs your location to display apps and ads that are relevant to you, which is an easy pass.) Next, scroll to the bottom and go to System Services and review all of the options here. It's quite easy to disable the wrong option on this page, so be careful what you turn off. However, it's safe to turn off location access for certain things such as In-App Web Browsing. Pro tip: Turn on Status Bar Icon if not enabled already, so you'll see every time an app on your iPhone is accessing your location information.
You can also open the Significant Locations menu on this page and select Clear History, which will delete all saved locations that apps use to deliver location-based services. However, this information is end-to-end encrypted, and can't be seen or accessed by Apple. This data can also be quite useful: For example, Photos could create a slideshow of pictures taken at your house or a favored camping spot using this information.
Disable Enhanced Visual Search
A related feature is called Enhanced Visual Search, which allows Apple to match places in your photos with a global index. With it, you can search for landmarks or points of interest in the Photos app to find pictures. You can disable this too by going to Settings > Apps > Photos and turning off Enhanced Visual Search.
Disable Apple analytics
Apple collects data to improve its products. None of this is enabled by default, but you should review these settings to see if you want to keep sharing this data with the company. You can disable these settings on your iPhone by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services and scroll to the bottom. Disable iPhone Analytics, Routing & Traffic, and Improve Maps.
After this, you can go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements. All of these options are designed to collect data to improve Apple services, and if you're uncomfortable with that, feel free to disable them all.
Reduce personalized advertising
For a company that hypes up privacy, Apple has a lot of advertising on its own platforms. You can't completely block most of Apple's ads, but you can reduce how often they interrupt your workflow. You can also reduce how much of your data is used to personalize Apple's ads from Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising on your iPhone, then disable Personalized Ads.
Shore up your iCloud security
iCloud security has come a long way in recent years, but the way many of us use it, Apple still has too much potential access to our data. By default, 15 items are end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) when using iCloud, including Messages in iCloud, Health data, and passwords. But a number of other data points are not, including Notes, Photos, and your iCloud backup. What's more, if you do use iCloud to backup your iPhone, your Messages lose E2EE. This data is all still encrypted, it's just Apple has the keys to unlock that encryption. That's great if you lose access to your account, but not so great from a privacy and security perspective: Do you really want Apple having access to your messages or iCloud backups?
The simplest way to encrypt most of your iCloud data with E2EE is through Advanced Data Protection. This setting encrypts nearly all your iCloud data, including Messages, Notes, Contacts, and backups themselves, with E2EE. That solves the privacy and security problem (Apple no longer has the keys to access this data), but it also means Apple can't help you if you lose access to your account, or to the recovery key. If you do go down this route, exercise caution.
The only data points not encrypted are iCloud Mail, Contacts, and Calendar. If you're deadly serious about Apple not having access to this information, you'll need to disable these options. To see your iCloud data usage, go to Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud, and tap the See All button next to Saved to iCloud. From here, you can go through this list and disable iCloud syncing for services that don't need it, whether it be for E2EE reasons or not. For me, Apple Books and Voice Memos aren't essential, and I disabled syncing for these services. I've also turned off iCloud Photos and switched to OneDrive, since I have 1TB of storage free from my Microsoft 365 subscription.
Once you're done policing what data you send to Apple, consider opting out of data collection by data brokers and conducting a privacy audit on your iPhone.
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