14 DAY TRIAL // An Apple customer in China has turned to the WWW to reveal how a company employee threatened to leak all his files stored in the cloud, including photos, emails, and contacts, just because he wanted to remove his iCloud account.
The story, which was posted on Weibo, beings with a Chinese customer contacting Apple to close his iCloud account shortly after finding out that local cloud storage would be handled by state-owned Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Development Co. Ltd.
While Apple’s decision to move cloud data to Chinese servers raised privacy concerns, the customer, surnamed Qin, says he told an Apple employee on the phone that he only wanted to close his iCloud account because he hadn’t used it in some time.
The conversation quickly turned into a verbal fight due to what Qin described an “arrogant and neglectful attitude,” and after refusing to share any personal information, he eventually hung up.
Later the same day, the Apple customer explains, he was called by the alleged employee who told him to check his email addresses linked to iCloud. The employee, who was working as a senior adviser for the Cupertino-based company, threatened to leak all files stored in the cloud if a friend request on messaging platform QQ wasn’t sent within an hour.
Qin then goes on to explain that although he did submit a friend request, it was never accepted, and after calling back the employee, he was told that all his information was copied from the cloud.
“I can’t say you’ll wish you were dead, but I can at least cause some hassles for you,” the employee said in a recorded conversation.
Sketchy info
Qin told Sixth Tone that he reported the case to the police and Apple itself started an investigation, revealing that the employee was fired, but without providing any specifics as to what data might have been compromised.
“I’ve started getting calls from strangers,” Qin explained, even though the phone number could have been obtained from other sources as well.
While the story might indeed be concerning for Apple customers, especially since the company is moving cloud data to China, there are a few sketchy details in this report that raises question as to its legitimacy.
Apple doesn’t typically allow entry-level support personnel to access iCloud data, and such information is only disclosed based on government requests. Furthermore, the phone number and email addresses of an Internet user can be obtained from a wide variety of sources, especially in the case of public accounts, so there’s no proof that the Apple employee, if he was indeed an Apple employee, indeed got access to iCloud data.
We’re still waiting for Apple to provide an official statement on this and will update the article should some clarification be provided.