Apple Caves, Delays Ad Tracking Protections in iOS 14

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One of the most exciting iOS 14 features may not be coming this year, if at all. It’s not one that makes the audience gasp, like widgets on the home screen (finally) or a notification bubble for incoming calls (again, finally), but privacy’s important. iOS 14 was going to introduce a change that would make privacy on the platform better on iOS than any other operating system. Apple was going to alert users when an app wanted to track their activities in other applications and allow users to block such tracking. Facebook, Amazon, and other advertisers/data hogs were not pleased, and voiced their frustrations. It seems Apple is caving to that pressure.

Apple will still ask users if they want to prevent tracking, however, they won’t force app developers to comply until next year at the earliest.

Apple took a stand for their customers, then they gave up.

The Plan: Limit Tracking

Apple’s initial plan was to release a new privacy feature as part of iOS 14. If an app developer wanted to track a user across multiple apps or websites, as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others do, they’d have to ask the user for permission to do so. Obviously, users will not accept this, as no one wants companies invading their privacy for no reason.

The feature was supposed to launch with iOS 14. It was actually a large part of Apple’s continued focus on privacy. The idea is that developers would have to request access to the “Identification for advertisers,” or IDFA. Usually, this is a given. However, iOS 14 allows you to not only block all advertisers from Settings -> Privacy -> Tracking, but you can also block advertisers from seeing your IDFA on an individual basis. Apps like Facebook, Amazon, and others, rely on this to get cross-app data.

For example, say you look at something on the Amazon app. Amazon grabs your browsing data and stores your IDFA. They then go to Facebook. Facebook has your IDFA as well. So, when they get your Amazon browsing history from Amazon, they can reference it directly to a Facebook account to make suggestions to you specifically. That’s how these apps always seem to know what you’re thinking, or what you may be interested in. Tracking users across the web is easy. But without this IDFA, tracking users between apps will be impossible.

Where the Plan Fell Apart: Ad Giants

“We are committed to ensuring users can choose whether or not they allow an app to track them. To give developers time to make necessary changes, apps will be required to obtain permission to track users starting early next year.”

– Apple

Facebook went as far as to say that the feature could be ruinous for their business model. The feature is similar to “Do Not Track” tokens in browsers, but, because it’s built into iOS, app developers would have to actually follow it. Most websites simply ignore “Do Not Track” features in browsers. The only way I’ve found that works is using separate Firefox tab containers for tracking-heavy sites like Facebook, Amazon, shopping sites, and any other social networks.

Apple’s version of this in iOS would work much like those, blocking all data flow or identification between apps if the user doesn’t opt-in to data tracking. Apple has outlined the proposed changes on their website. Tracking would be limited to anonymized data or on-device logic only.

Fortunately, Apple isn’t completely giving up on the feature. According to Apple, they’ll roll it out to iOS 14 users “early next year” (2021). Apple will release iOS 14 this fall without the tracking protection, but privacy-violating ad companies’ days are numbered. Between Apple and Firefox, DNS over SSL and VPN popularity, consumers may soon have a way to end Facebook, Google, and Amazon’s hold on their lives.

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Sources:

• Juli Clover, MacRumors
• Mark Gurman, Bloomberg
• Mike Perterson, AppleInsider
• Nick Statt, The Verge