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Government firm to run Apple data centre in China

According to reports, Apple is about to launch a data centre with links to the government in China, making some experts concerned about the security of data transferred from Macs, iPads and iPhones to iCloud.

The data centre announced last week will be situated in the Guizhou province and managed by a firm which belongs to the Chinese government. This comes after a new law was approved which requires data firms to store data of Chinese customers on servers inside the country.

The new centre will store videos, pictures and documents uploaded to iCloud accounts by Apple users who live inside China. Data belonging to clients outside China will still be stored in the U.S. and later also Denmark.
Large tech firms such as IBM, Microsoft and Amazon have already taken similar steps to comply with the new Chinese legislation.

Apple, however, prides itself on data security. Last year, the firm was involved in a court fight with the American government over an order to force open the iPhone of a suspected shooter in a mass killing.
Some experts fear that a data centre inside China will make it easier for the government to get access to data via a court order or similar means.



Lawyer Nate Cardozo from digital rights group Electronic Frontier advised Apple users in China to turn off the iCloud feature on their devices and lock these devices with a secure password.

China currently accounts for nearly 20% of Apple’s total turnover and is the company’s third biggest market after North America and Europe. The firm said in a statement that “no backdoors will be created into any of our systems.” It will also hold the security keys that protect iCloud users’ data in the new centre.

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About the author

Chris

I've been a passionate evangelist for Apple and the Macintosh throughout my working life, my first love was a Quadra 605 working with a small creative agency in the south of Norfolk UK in the mid 1990's, I later progressed to other roles in other Macintosh dominated industries, first as a Senior graphic designer at a small printing company and then a production manager at Guardian Media Group. As the publishing and printing sector wained I moved into Internet Marketing and in 2006 co-founded blurtit.com which grew to become one the top 200 visited sites in the US (according to Quantcast), at its peak receiving over 15 million visits per month. For the last ten years I have worked as an Affiliate and Consultant to many different business and start ups, my key skill set being online marketing, on page monetisation, landing page optimisation and traffic generation, if you would like to hire me or discuss your current project please reach out to me here.

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