The delayed reaction and mangled response from Apple over its privacy breaches follows a pattern of failed PR practices by the company, experts content, putting its brand in serious risk.
Apple took over a week to deny that the phones were keeping logs of users locales after researchers found the file hidden on the iPhone last Wednesday.
“Any company that puts off responding ignoring or not saying anything is an insult to the customers , employees and shareholders,” said Larry Smith, President of the Institute for Crisis management.
“There is an axiom,” Smith explained. “Never stand in front of a burning building and say to a reporter: ‘what fire.’”
On Wednesday Apple published a list of questions and answers that explaining that it doesn’t store iPhone users’ physical locations, but instead a list of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding them.
It came 7 days after the first report came out that phones around the world were keeping detailed location data of users.
Apple said the data help phones figure out their location to help enhance services like maps and other location based services.
It did acknowledge that the data was stored up to a year due to a bug in the system, not intentionally. It would release a fix in coming weeks.
But the response was “inadequate” given the size and resources of the company explained John Marconi, communications, marketing and crisis management expert at DePaul University.
“Apple has shown themselves to be in a class by themselves [in terms of innovation] and for that reason this response is particularly disappointing,” Marconi said. “With that comes the huge responsibility and when they fall short of delivering the kind of disclosure information they do themselves an enormous amount of damage.”