Apple is about to give millions of iPhone users a choice: allow Facebook and other apps running on the Apple iOS platform to track your activity on your phone and online, or stop tracking completely.
What will you choose?
New features in Apple’s new iPhone software, iOS 14.5, include a major privacy update called App Tracking Transparency, which requires apps to ask for permission before collecting user or device data. Specifically, the update changes the Advertiser ID (IDFA), a unique, random number assigned to each iPhone that allows advertisers and developers to track user behavior, including application usage and web browsing behavior. IDFA is often used to personalize ads.
Apple is also releasing software updates for other devices, including the iPad, Apple Watch, Mac computers and Apple TV. Apple is hosting an event on Tuesday where the company will announce product updates, and the software will be available this week.
An Apple spokesman said the new privacy features were developed to “provide transparency and give users the ability to choose whether their data is being tracked.” Apple requires all developers to comply with the new policies, but will not require software developers to update immediately.
Why Facebook objects
Facebook, Google and other large technology companies are unhappy with the changes.
In December, Facebook posted a ad on the whole page in the New York Times, which argued that changes to iOS 14.5 user tracking would negatively affect small businesses. “[T]the average small business advertiser will see a 60% discount on their sales for every dollar they spend, “the Facebook ad said.
A Facebook spokesman could not verify the claim of a 60% loss for small businesses, but shared a post on the Facebook blog and a video stating that the Apple update will force developers to allow in-app purchases to offset lost revenue.
“It will force companies to use subscriptions and other payments in the app for revenue, which means that Apple will take advantage and many free services will have to start charging or exit the market,” the blog post says. Facebook has done before warned advertisers that the ad network could become “inefficient” for Apple products.
Google does not intend to make similar changes to its Android operating system. The mobile operating system has a similar device identification feature called ADID GPS, which allows Android advertisers to personalize ads. The current version of Android also requires unique user permissions, which allow the app to access a phone’s location, camera, and microphone.
A spokesman for the company, which is owned by Alphabet, told CBS News: “We are always looking for ways to work with developers to raise privacy while allowing for a healthy, ad-supported application ecosystem.”
An advantage for privacy
The Google Chrome web browser will begin to limit or delete data shared with third-party tracking cookies by early 2022, according to a company spokesman. Instead of tracking people, Google intends to allow ads targeted to user groups with similar interests, an action it says is less invasive, but which privacy critics criticize.
Apple’s update is “the most significant improvement in digital privacy in the history of the Internet.” And he’ll give up Facebook, ”said Jason Kint, a privacy lawyer and CEO of Digital Content Next. said in a tweet.
AdWeek, a commercial for the advertising industry, recently surveyed a number of small business advertisers and reported that “no one really knows” what to expect from iOS changes.
Other experts are more positive. Apple’s policy is right for both advertisers and consumers, said technical analyst Rene Ritchie. “It’s good for consumers. Not bad for advertisers. If we think about it in a consumer-oriented way, [advertisers] we just had unrestricted access to our data forever and they were almost a right to own who we are and what we do online, “he told CBS News.
Ritchie said consumers have the right to maintain privacy or share mobile phone and browsing data. “These are our data. And they are so valuable to us [advertisers] that they are willing to spend all this money, accumulating and analyzing it, but we still own it, “he said.