Apple acknowledged that it could obtain personal data including text messages, contact lists and photos of its users, causing an uproar among the Chinese public. At the moment, there are voices calling for Chinese civil servants to stop using iPhones and iPads.

However, if we can step back and cool down a bit, we'll see that the criticism has gone a bit too far. After all, although Apple admitted that it can extract users' personal information, currently there are no reports about a large number of people falling victim to this.

Perhaps a more urgent question we should ask is if there are any smartphone manufacturers and vendors who can obtain users' personal data, but who have yet to disclose this fact.

For the general public, a more perilous threat is the one they do not know about, rather than the one who confesses openly.

Apple is not the only company manufacturing smartphones, and the iPhone is far from the only smartphone worth asking questions about. Besides the iOS, some other operation systems are also worth our alarm and attention.

The iPhone has a closed operating system, so that neither users nor a third party can modify, add or delete information stored in the system without the permission of the Apple operation team.

Another system that enjoys great popularity is Android. Based on a variant of the Linux kernel, it is more open, but also more unstable. The popular South Korean-made Samsung mobile phones, as well as most of China's domestic smartphones, have used the Android since they came on the market.

Android's open nature, though helping attract a large number of developers to utilize the open source code to add new elements to their projects, makes it vulnerable to leaking users' personal data in an unpredictable and irretrievable way.

For instance, browser, instant messenger, antivirus software and even photo makeover programs can easily extract personal data as long as they get the permission of users. From this perspective, anyone is able to acquire the information they want through the Android system.

Smartphones, one of the standard bearers for a new hyper-connected age, bring convenience to people's lives, while at the same time posing a new threat to their personal rights and interests. It is fair to say that information technology is a double-edged sword. It is an urgent task to strike a balance between its advantages and deficiencies.

Therefore, regarding the Apple incident, we should not just focus on the controversy surrounding its security, but ponder how we should further regulate the conduct of all smartphone manufactures and developers of corresponding applications.

Regulators should take into account the overall situation, and introduce appropriate, effective measures to prevent future incidents.

Mabel Wang, a free-lance writer based in Beijing