The subject of in-app tracking is quite sensitive. Any application has multiple mechanisms for getting information from us, so being sure that when you request that this track not be tracked it will stop says a lot. This is reflected in an article published by the Financial Times, which states that Facebook and Snapchat continue to follow their users to serve advertising, even though they asked that it not be.
The huge interest in our data
Last May, Apple launched App Tracking Transparency, a system with which we could ask apps not to follow us through apps and the web for advertising purposes. It is important to underline here the part “for advertising purposes”. It’s also important to point out how the dialog presents us with the options.
When an application requests access to the camera, we can “Allow” or “Do not allow”. When an app asks us to follow us We can “Allow” or “Ask the application not to follow me”. The way to increase options is totally in tune with the situation, and it is not possible to prevent an app from following us 100%.
As we said at the beginning of the article, apps have a wide variety of resources to be able to track our activity. The most obvious is to ask for a connection, something both Facebook and Snapchat do. At this moment they already know who we are and can register exactly what they want.
“Do not allow” is not the same as “Ask the app not to follow me”.
It is true that the Apple system is preventing apps from accessing the IFA, Identifier For Advertising, from our device, but there are other resources. As noted in the Financial Times article, Apple specifies that developers “should not obtain information from the device in order to identify it individually”, which Facebook and Snapchat were taken at face value to circumvent the restriction.
According to the Financial Times, these developers consider that the way Apple writes the text allows them to continue to observe the “cues” and behaviors of user groups to show them advertising. Apple has never supported this kind of practice, but it is also true that collecting anonymized statistics on the use of an application is a very widespread practice and, in many cases, necessary for the proper development of the application and of the service it offers.
To think that we can install the Facebook application, for example, and that by “asking the application not to follow me” to use the service without Facebook knowing where we are, is going too far. Snapchat explained to its investors that it will soon be sharing the data of its more than 300 million users, including those who asked not to be tracked, with advertisers, so that they have a “more complete and real-time” view of their advertising campaigns.
Facebook, for its part, is, after its financial results, in the process of restructuring its advertising system to “use aggregated and anonymized data”, precisely the mechanism that the company considers as allowing them to circumvent Apple’s restrictions. And this without taking into account that there is some data, like the IP, the location of the IP which Apple can’t prevent apps from knowing.
It is more than clear that for the vast majority of applicants, asking not to be tracked and denying access to the IFA is an excellent measure for our privacy. Some apps, however, it seems like, as the Financial Times reports, they keep getting a lot more data than we sure would like.
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