Apple to transfer Chinese iCloud operations to GCBD in February

AlTech · January 16, 2018

iCloud, Apple's online Cloud Storage Business, has been seeing a fair amount of success in recent years despite things like the iCloud celebrity hack in 2014.

The physical location of where Chinese iCloud Data is stored is being handed off to a local Chinese company in February. Said local Chinese company happens to be owned by the Guizhou provincial government.

Apple claims that they will still have access to the data and that it will be stored just as safely as before.

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This means that the physical location of Chinese iCloud customers' data will change, but customers shouldn't see any differences on their end of their iCloud accounts. In Apple's message sent to mainland Chinese customers, the company says the new operations setup will "enable us to continue improving the speed and reliability of iCloud and to comply with Chinese regulations." Customers are urged to consider the new terms and conditions of iCloud operated by GCBD, and customers who are not comfortable with GCBD partnership can terminate their accounts.

While the new agreement hands off local iCloud operations to GCBD, both the Chinese firm and Apple have access to data stored in Chinese iCloud accounts. In a statement provided to 9to5Mac, Apple reassures customers that their data is still just as safe and private as it was before the partnership. "Apple has strong data privacy and security protections in place and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems," the statement say

This is what Apple had to say:

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“Last year, we announced that Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data (GCBD) would become the operator of iCloud in China. As we said at the time, we’re committed to continuously improving the user experience, and our partnership with GCBD will allow us improve the speed and reliability of our iCloud services products while also complying with newly passed regulations that cloud services be operated by Chinese companies. Because of our commitment to transparency, there will be a series of customer communications over the course of the next seven weeks to make sure customers are well informed of the coming changes. Apple has strong data privacy and security protections in place and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems.

The switch to the new services will occur on February 28th and Chinese iCloud users should not notice any difference.

The biggest concern is that the Chinese government will be in a better position to spy on it's citizens.

I don't see a reason for why this is happening unless the Chinese government has talked to Apple behind the scenes about this.

Sources:

https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/10/apple-will-begin-storing-chinese-customer-icloud-data-at-new-china-data-center-from-next-month/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/apple-to-hand-off-chinese-icloud-operations-to-local-firm-in-february/