Apple Pushes Back Against Ad Tracking in Safari and iOS 14

Apple Pushes Back Against Ad Tracking in Safari and iOS 14

"This year we wanted to help you with tracking in apps," said Katie Skinner, a user privacy software manager at Apple during the keynote. "We believe tracking should always be transparent and under your control. So moving forward, App Store policy will require apps to ask before tracking you across apps and websites owned by other companies."

In iOS 14, you'll see a prompt when an app is trying to track you across other services. You'll have the option to "Allow Tracking" or "Ask App Not to Track." It's notable that "asking" seems different from "blocking," but Apple says in its notes to developers that they will need this permission from users to conduct external tracking. An Apple spokesperson specifically told WIRED that if a user doesn't consent to tracking, the app won't be able to access a type of identifier often used in targeted advertising and other tracking called the IDFA identifier. This would likely be similar to invoking the existing iOS feature "Limit Ad Tracking," which zeros out a user's IDFA number, but doesn't preclude tracking with other identifiers.


Apple lists two exceptions through which an app can track a user without permission: when an app is sharing data locally on a user's device with another app but never leaves the device in an identifying way, and when the data will be used for fraud detection and prevention or other security protections.


While any step toward reducing inter-app tracking is significant, the new framework likely won't resolve the problem of online tracking overnight.


"It’s an improvement, but I'm unsure how well it will actually wo ..

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