Apple Daily Report: Cook gifts 23,215 shares of Apple stock to an unidentified charity (and more news)

Since Steve and I can’t cover everything, at the end of each week day, we’ll offer this wrap-up of news items you should check out.

Apple CEO Tim Cook gifted 23,215 shares of his company stock to an unidentified charity this week, an amount worth nearly $5 million at the end of trading on Tuesday. Speaking of stock, the tech giant’s head honcho is set to collect stock worth about $120 million this week thanks to a run-up in shares of the iPhone maker.

On Friday, Cook stands to receive 280,000 shares tied to his continued service as chief executive officer. He’ll get as many as 280,000 additional shares if Apple’s stock-market return over the preceding three years exceeds at least two-thirds of the firms in the S&P 500.

Verizon Wireless’ throttling of a fire department that uses its data services has been submitted as evidence in a lawsuit that seeks to reinstate federal net neutrality rules.

Idle Android devices typically send almost 10 times as much data to Google as iOS devices send to Apple’s servers, according to new research shared by trade association Digital Content Next. In a paper titled “Google Data Collection,” Douglas C. Schmidt, a computer science professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, offers some conclusions on how much Google is collecting about consumers who use the company’s products, even when they’re not interacting with their smartphones and tablets.

Security researchers at Versprite have identified security flaws in Airmail for Mac that can expose private data, including an entire account’s email database. You can read the full breakdown of the vulnerabilities on the Versprite blog.

Apple and Google earn big money through the commissions they charge for sales made through their smartphone app stores. Right now, they take a 30% cut of most sales made through their stores. But that rate could soon plunge, the Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter said in a research note.

Last month, Apple announced that it was continuing its expansion of App Store Search Ads around the world, and today the platform has gone live in 12 additional countries in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.