EU Advertisers Criticize New App Tracking Privacy Controls in iOS 14

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Tracking is akin to spying. In the real world, it would be the equivalent of a marketing employee snooping on my shopping, leisure activities - without my consent or knowledge - then shoving huge posters in front of my face whenever I commute to work. I don’t want that.

 

[macdos]

EU is also out to protect its companies, specifically ”European digital advertising associations” in this case. European media companies have bled some 90% of its ad revenue to FANG and other US tech companies, and I believe van der Leyen would like to remedy that.

Most likely they will step up on Apples behalf. The EU is out to protect its citizens, not destroy American companies. If there is a side clearly in the wrong or suspected of wrong doing then it is investigated.

 

[grjj]

That's a very strange idea. I prefer no adds. And I don't want one web site to know what I do on another. This is very simple.

It's not the websites tracking you, it's the advertising companies that pay for those websites to exist.

 

[dogslobber]

All ad companies like Facebook and Google should wither and die. They are evil be design with their creeper stalking perversions.

 

[grjj]

Tracking is akin to spying. In the real world, it would be the equivalent of a marketing employee snooping on my shopping, leisure activities - without my consent or knowledge - then shoving huge posters in front of my face whenever I commute to work. I don’t want that.

They do this now, just not to the extent that virtual allows. Your purchases at stores are tracked and aggregated, stores watch customer movement within their stores, demographics of people using the highways and transit systems at particular times and days are tracked and known. All that data is used to put advertising platforms in the best places and get the highest prices for the ads.

 

[jarman92]

How time-deaf does one have to be to put out a statement like this?

 

[SAIRUS]

FYI some services are provided for free because you choose to provide your data for metrics. So don’t use them.
That said I totally agree that one must be absolutely transparent how my data will be used and as a society we must determine what’s a safe boundary of its usage.

 

[s66]

That's very good. I would even applaud if this authorisation would be limited in time, and I have to authorise again every other 3 or 6 months.

Yeah, but please make it impossible to ask for permission again and again if permission was denied.

 

[ericwn]

I wonder if EU government regulators will step in on Apple's behalf?

Damn, I shouldn't say stuff like that while drinking milk.

I doubt the advertising folks will want to take it on a legal route. The resulting negative exposure would not help their case.

 

[LillDrutten]

Probably Apples biggest hit since Macbook AIR. This feature is a Google killer!

 

[dlewis23]

Too bad, piss off.

You say that, but you forget about the all the small independent develops who build apps people really enjoy and make all or most of their money on advertising because no one buys app.

This will be a feature that people will likely end up regretting being added. Because it will lead to a lot of apps going away or having to charge a ton of money to make up for lost revenue from ads.

If apps can't make money because people don't buy them, then they have to rely on ads, well if you take away the ability to rely on ads then the apps will go away. Apps are very expensive to make and maintain. If you can't make money no one is going to make them.

This will also lead to more tracking just without using the IDAF. It will go back to the way it was done before, google will make there own ID that uses your location, IP device model and other things to have their own ID.
[automerge]1593782375[/automerge]

Won't somebody think of the advertisers?!😭

How about you think of the individual developers this actually hurts, This does not hurt Facebook because they serve their own ads from their own platform. This hurts individual develops who have to use things like Google Admob. How are they suppose to make money from their apps now?

Because we all know none of you really buy apps, you want them for free just like everyone else.

 

[s66]

I don't like tracking or data collection any more than anyone else, but we as an Internet society have decided that "free" is what we want.
The workforce and infrastructure to maintain the free services you enjoy (google, facebook, twitter, etc.) require money. Since we've repeatedly caused "subscription based" companies to fail, it's obvious the free model is the preferred on for consumers.
You have a choice: pay with your wallet, or pay with your privacy. If you don't want to do either then you can't have the nice things that you enjoy.

I'm NOT siding with the advertisers at all, I love the explicit requirement for acceptance. But don't go using free services all the while bemoaning the advertisers that pay for your access to all those free services. You chose to be the product long, long ago, don't whine about it now.

I don't mind advertising when done in a limited and tasteful way. What I dislike is the tracking. Search once for a light bulb, buy it and put it in use. And then for the next 2 months you'll get tracked by ads for all sorts of light bulbs that you don't need nor want anymore, on every single website regardless of it not having anything at all to do with bloody lightbulbs in the first place.

Please, let the subject of the website determine what ads show, not what I visited 2 months ago.




As to the APPS being required to ask for permission to track me, that's totally different from websites wanting to track me. And I'll pay for apps that I want to use (there's very, very few of them), and I don't want any tracking from any of them at all.
My phone, my pocket where it is in, and it's got far too many sensors to get me to ever let any advertiser get access to any of it.

 

[dlewis23]

I don't mind advertising when done in a limited and tasteful way. What I dislike is the tracking. Search once for a light bulb, buy it and put it in use. And then for the next 2 months you'll get tracked by ads for all sorts of light bulbs that you don't need nor want anymore, on every single website regardless of it not having anything at all to do with bloody lightbulbs in the first place.

Please, let the subject of the website determine what ads show, not what I visited 2 months ago.




As to the APPS being required to ask for permission to track me, that's totally different from websites wanting to track me. And I'll pay for apps that I want to use (there's very, very few of them), and I don't want any tracking from any of them at all.
My phone, my pocket where it is in, and it's got far too many sensors to get me to ever let any advertiser get access to any of it.

If it worked the way you wanted it to, ads would pay 5 cents. Thats the problem, when ad advertiser has a shot a getting an ad in front of someone it actually wants to they are willing to pay a ton more, something thats actually livable. Websites and apps can't exist on ads that pay 5 cents. Thank about that.

This stuff is ever expensive to create and run yet everyone wants it for free and gets all upset when ads track you so advertised will actually pay.

You can't have it both ways, you will either have ads with apps that do this or no app because we all know people don't pay for apps.

 

[windywalks]

Wow, boohoo... Cry me a river. I'm so bummed, that I won't be harassed by an algorithm that analyzes my every search and online behavior.
This will be a great way for the people who unwittingly fall pray to all the marketing ploys to stop getting caught up in shameless propaganda spending money they don't have on things they don't need. At least in some way.

 

[Bokito]

Protecting your privacy should be the default. Giving up your privacy should be opt in.

 

[LillDrutten]

One thing.
Are they doing this for their customers or do they do this to hit Google? And still, it will only work for apps. The problem is still there for web?

 

[ruka.snow]

One thing.
Are they doing this for their customers or do they do this to hit Google? And still, it will only work for apps. The problem is still there for web?

If Apple didn't keep working on locking these things down then they would find it rather hard to claim they are advocating privacy.

 

[dwaite]

Ok i read this but where is their actual argument? Lol if anything this seems to be how GDPR should be followed in the first place on ANY platform. Suckers

BTW i haven’t seen that pop up on the iOS 14 beta yet. Does that mean all tracking is disabled by default now until their apps r updated or are they all tracking without me able to block it until again the apps r updated?

and WHAT tracking does is actually block? Surely not everything? Is there a sheet?

Safari will try to anonymize third party web domains (e.g. scripts, images and frames from a site other than the one you are on) - block cookies and local storage, give just the domain of the site you visit rather than the full referrer url.

This particular feature is related to the advertising ID, which was added after apple blocked abuse of the UDID (app accessible unique device identifier).

The advertising ID is blocked by default, returning all zeros to keep apps from breaking.

An app needs to trigger the OS to display the ‘tracking notice’ to get the actual advertising ID.

In the future, the app store rules will require anything which qualifies as tracking to get user consent, else be rejected by the store.

 

[nwcs]

On the question “what about the developers who rely on ad revenue?” Simple: offer a no ads option and guarantee that all tracking is removed in that mode. Right now you pay to not see an ad but you still get tracked. You shouldn’t get to double dip.

On the question “what about free sites?” Most of them are useless. Maybe it’s time to reintroduce people to the concept of paying for things. The culture of free exists because the companies created and encouraged that culture. It can be changed.

On the question “won’t people think of the advertisers?” No. They never had the level of intrusive access in history until now. They also refuse to be open, honest, and clear about what/how they do things and they obfuscate their business practices. It’s also a gigantic security risk. It’s simple. Evolve.

 

[TiTwo102]

Wow, I didn’t even know apps could do that !

When you use a web browser, it store cookies that follow you from websites to websites, right ?
But I didn’t know an app is able to track you everywere on your phone. I thought sandboxing wouldn’t allow that.

What does in mean exactly ? In iOS 13 and before, an app can track all your habits everywhere on your phone ? On all other apps ?

 

[dwaite]

In my mind, it scares me, as me saying YES, you have access to my photo library, basically means they can go thru all my photo's as I've just given them permissions to them all.

But does it? And how do I know what they are doing if I do give them such access?

Yes, that is what it means, They get access to the entire photo library.

In iOS 14, this permission lets you select a portion of your photo library (a few photos or albums) to share.

They also are adding a new photo picker - the existing picker runs in the application and can be customized, but requires the application to gain access to the photos in order to work. The new picker is run by the OS, and only exposes the photos picked and thus does not require this permission/consent dialog at all.

 

[Ojiisan]

Yippie!

 

[dwaite]

EU is also out to protect its companies, specifically ”European digital advertising associations” in this case. European media companies have bled some 90% of its ad revenue to FANG and other US tech companies, and I believe van der Leyen would like to remedy that.

One great way would be to embrace the privacy-preserving techniques that Google and Facebook will likely drag their feet on. Having an advertising platform which can do ad attribution without the user agreeing to surveillance seems like a competitive differentiator.

 

[maxfromdenmark]

Meanwhile here in Denmark an investigation of Tik Tok as an Possibly extremely violating of users privacy has started this week.

 

[rjohnstone]

According to the report, the group of European marketing firms said the pop-up warning and the limited ability to customize it still carries "a high risk of user refusal."
firms said the pop-up warning and the limited ability to customize it still carries "a high risk of user refusal."

Exactly. My data is mine. If you want to use it then you must pay me.

To play devil’s advocate here, if they are providing you an app at no financial cost to you, the tracking is how they get paid. Don’t like it? Don’t use the app.
For paid apps, block away. They already got paid.