WhoIs records show that Apple has purchased the domain PrivacyIsImportant.com, a domain which hasn’t previously been owned.
The domain is not yet in use …
The purchase was first spotted by DomainInvesting.
The domain was registered yesterday, initially for one year.
PrivacyIsImportant.com does not yet resolve to a website or any type of landing page. My guess is that Apple will use “privacy is important” as some sort of tag line and the domain name will forward to the relevant page within Apple’s website. I don’t recall seeing the company use any unbranded domain names before on a standalone basis, beyond iCloud.com.
The registrar is CSC Corporate Domains, which describes itself as a domain security company used by more than half of the top 100 global brands.
Apple has used privacy as a significant point of differentiation in its marketing, with CEO Tim Cook frequently contrasting Apple’s approach to personal data with that of companies where ‘you are the product.’ He recently wrote a TIME op-ed in which he called for legislation to create GDPR-like protections for US citizens.
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The company recently suffered a privacy-related embarrassment, however, when it was revealed that a FaceTime bug potentially allowed a caller to hear and see you before you answered the call. Apple took the Group FaceTime feature offline while it fixed the problem.
With poor timing, details of the bug emerged shortly after Apple ran a ‘What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone‘ ad campaign.
Apple’s plans for the PrivacyIsImportant.com domain aren’t yet known, but one possibility is that it might be used to host materials relating to the company’s call for federal privacy regulation.