Apple Sets Date for China Data Handover
January 10 2018 - 5:39AM
Dow Jones News
By Yoko Kubota
BEIJING-- Apple Inc. said it will turn over its cloud operations
in China to a state-owned local partner Feb. 28, complying with
Chinese law mandating that customer data collected on the mainland
be stored here.
With the handover, photos, documents and messages uploaded by
Apple users throughout China will be stored at a data center in the
southwest province of Guizhou operated by the local partner,
Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Co., Ltd.
Customers who log on to the Chinese iCloud service are notified
of the change, and informed that they can either keep using iCloud
or deactivate it on Feb. 28.
Apple said that over the next seven weeks it will seek to make
sure customers know about the coming changes, adding that the
company "has strong data-privacy and security protections in place
and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems."
China has tightened its cloud-computing oversight, saying it
needs to ensure the privacy of its citizens' data. Late last year,
to comply with the new rules, Amazon Inc.'s Amazon Web Services
unit sold computing equipment used for its cloud services in China
to its local partner.
Apple announced its plans to transfer the cloud data to its
Guizhou partner last summer. This week's announcement, first
reported by People's Daily, set the date and other details.
Last year, following Beijing's requests, Apple shut down
hundreds of virtual private network apps, or VPNs, that allow users
to access blocked websites. Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook
defended that action at a business forum last month in Guangzhou,
saying Apple needs to abide by Chinese laws so it can participate
in the market and not be a bystander.
Yang Jie and Xiao Xiao contributed to this article.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 10, 2018 05:24 ET (10:24 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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