While phone owners are meant to benefit from improved tracking transparency, advertisers may not be as pleased with Apple’s new announcement made on 28 January, which marks Data Privacy Day.
Mobile app developers can collect data on iPhone owners and then share this information with companies to aid in targeted advertising. Users can disable such tracking if they regulate the settings of every app they buy, but they would need to proactively do so.
Soon, instead of phone owners having to go to each downloaded app and disable data tracking, they will be asked by developers for their permission outright.
A new App Tracking Transparency feature
According to Apple, the new opt-in requirement, called App Tracking Transparency, will make apps get the user’s permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies.
Users will be able to check which apps have requested tracking permission in the settings section.
It is no secret that advertisers use the collected personal information of users in order to optimise their sales and marketing strategies.
To elaborate on the practices by advertisers and app developers and the effects on the users and their privacy, Apple published the “A Day in the Life of Your Data” report.
In the report Apple gave an example of how personal data is used by businesses to optimize targeted advertising through a story of a little girl Emma and her father John.
A little girl playing at the playground
Privacy organisation activists have welcomed the chance for iOS users to “have greater control over their personal information”.
Facebook, however, was less than happy about the new iOS policy to be rolled out by Apple, as a post of Facebook’s Vice-President of Ads Dan Levy suggested in 2020.
Despite Facebook’s dissatisfaction and its claim to have the interests of small businesses at heart, Apple plans to stand its ground and introduce the new policy “starting soon”.
The changes will come into effect with the upcoming release of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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