At WWDC20, Apple announced a small big change in the way we manage the Advertising ID of our devices. A change that would allow us to have more privacy and be the ones to choose whether or not we want to be followed. The company later announced that the arrival of this feature would be delayed compared to the launch of iOS and iPadOS 14. This drew criticism from some organizations, which Apple now resolves entirely in a letter.
Still having trouble preventing my iPhone from being tracked?
Before getting into the topic, let’s review the technical situation in a very simplified way. On our iPhone or iPad, the applications we install work by themselves Sandbox or sandbox that isolates them completely from the rest of the system. This means that these applications have nothing to remember to identify our iPhone, something which, of course, is done on purpose.
In exchange for this lack of references, Apple offers applications an identifier for advertisers. A small value that apps can use to identify our iPhone. An identifier widely used by the industry for advertising and tracking browsing habits, etc.
It is very important to keep in mind that we can deactivate the Advertising ID. If we do, the apps won’t be able to keep up with us, or at least we’ll make it that much harder for them. So what was announced at WWDC?
What was announced at WWDC, the big change that at the time drew criticism from Facebook, the change that has been delayed since the arrival of iOS and iPadOS 14 is the default setting, mostly. With iOS and iPadOS 14, Apple wanted to disable this ID by default.
Probably for us Applesfera readers familiar with these issues, changing that default setting means little, but for the rest of the billion iOS devices around the world, it’s more than very substantial. The situation is therefore as follows: Apple announces to the WWDC that it will deactivate the default advertising identifier on all its devices. From now on, apps will need to request permission to access this ID.
A permit which, in addition, will be granted individually. Thus, we can prevent access to the identifier and tracking of applications such as WhatsApp, but allow it in those that we consider.
In summary: we can already deactivate tracking for several yearsThe only thing to keep in mind is that we have to do it ourselves, this is not the default option, and when disabled (or enabled) it applies to all installed apps.
Criticism against and in favor of these measures
Faced with criticism from numerous companies and consortia, most of which are led by Facebook and Google, Apple has delayed the changes taking effect for a few months. What we call application tracking transparency is expected to arrive in early 2021.
At the time, Apple was already explaining that this delay had occurred to allow applications to adapt and make the necessary changes. Are the changes meant to follow us? This is not the idea. The changes involve moving to independent monetization systems or using advertising providers that respect our privacy.
Several consumer, privacy and other similar organizations sent a letter to Apple earlier this week criticizing the decision to postpone the arrival of App Tracking Transparency (ATT). They criticized that Apple would have to make these changes immediately to end so much tracking.
Apple’s response
Apple’s response in this regard was not long in coming. In a letter to EFF Apple is very concerned about this follow-up, which they describe as intrusive and scary:
Too often, information about you is collected on a company-owned website or application and combined with information collected separately by other companies for targeted advertising and advertising measures. Sometimes your data is even aggregated and resold by data brokers, which are third parties you don’t know or interact with.
The letter continues to assert that privacy-friendly advertising has always been the benchmark, at least until the arrival of tracking ten years ago:
Advertising that respects privacy is not only possible, it was the norm until the growth of the Internet. Some companies who would prefer the ATT never to be implemented have said this policy only hurts small businesses by limiting advertising options, but in fact the current data arms race mainly benefits large companies with large pools. of data.
Privacy-driven ad networks were the universal standard in advertising before the practice of unlimited data collection began a decade ago.
Some privacy-focused networks are a far cry from the approach Facebook uses:
In contrast, Facebook and others take a very different approach to targeting. Not only do they allow you to group users into smaller segments, but they use detailed data about online browsing activity to segment your ads. Facebook executives have made it clear that their intention is to collect as much data as possible about their products and those of third parties to develop and monetize detailed profiles of their users, and this disregard for user privacy continues to exist. ‘expand to include more of its products.
And Facebook’s reaction
Zuckerberg’s company responded with harsh words against Apple, saying Apple was doing the same thing they were: collect the data of its users. This accusation tries to build on the Gatekeeper feature which, as we have already explained, has nothing to do with tracking.
Apple is accused of monitoring and tracking people’s private data from their home computers without the knowledge of its customers thanks to its latest macOS update – and today’s letter is a distraction from that. They have a story. The same happened when it was revealed that Apple had violated people’s privacy and allowed access to private audios to millions of people without their knowledge thanks to a vulnerability in FaceTime. In this case, they applied [las reglas] to our internal business applications to change the subject. Unfortunately, we are not perfect and it has worked.
Recall that the FaceTime bug led to the deactivation of group calls, which Apple was quick to respond to, and this was completely fixed in an update. Also remember that Facebook, as stated in its own statement, used its “internal” business apps to bypass all iOS protections and collect user data.
Either way, leaving behind Facebook’s tantrum, it’s clear Apple is continuing its AAT activation plans in a future update to our iPhone and iPad. A system that will prevent advertising companies such as Facebook or Google, to name but the most important, from tracking our movements. Or at least that will make things a lot more difficult. A shift that hopefully brings the seemingly irreconcilable relationship between ads and privacy to a new balance: Ads yes, so does privacy.
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