What belongs to China, goes to China: a recent report indicates that a state-held tech firm is now taking responsibility on iCloud data belonging to Apple's China-based users.
As revealed, Apple's iCloud partner in China, Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD) has strike a deal with China Telecom's Tianyi Cloud division, enabling the latter to transfer all of the user data to its servers.
This means that emails, text messages, calls, and even photos of iCloud users in China are now under the protection of the state-owned firm. This new development will reportedly bring a plethora of benefits to users as their data can now be accessed more quickly as compared to the time when they have to ping back on Apple's main iCloud headquarters.
Understandably, this move from Apple draws flak especially from those who advocate user-privacy. Comments from the public were cited over at CNET saying that the data transfer could further empower the government, if not, make it easier, for them to check on their personal data.
Apple, meanwhile, clarified that their decision to turn over the entire China-based data to a sanctioned firm was not of their own. The Cupertino-based tech giant said that this is part of the deal made with the Chinese legislation that enables them to continue its operations on the mainland. This includes a market outlet for their tech products as well as sub-contracting China-based companies such as Foxconn and Wistron to manufacture a range of its handsets.
"China recently enacted laws requiring that cloud services offered to their citizens be operated by Chinese companies and that Chinese customers' data be stored in the country," Apple's statement reads.
"We elected to continue offering iCloud as we felt that discontinuing the service would result in a bad user experience and less data security and privacy for our Chinese customers."
Apple recently had a row with United States' FBI and other security agencies when the firm was ordered to open access to its encrypted data. Tim Cook, Apple's current CEO, vowed utmost protection of said data.
Apple users in China do have the option to opt out of local data storage and choose a different server for their iCloud account. It remains to be seen if this method would allow information to migrate or be deleted from the Chinese server. Moreover, there were reports saying users can sign up with a new account with a server that is now based on a different country of their choice.
