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How to Stop Apps From Tracking You in iOS 14.5

fumi2014 said:
Goodness me, Apple. What confusion.

So are you supposed to enable this switch or not? Mine was off by default.

Trillion dollar company cannot provide a simple explanation as to what the switch does.
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I think the intention of the switch is pretty clear. Not the implementation.
 
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Dappledan said:
If you think this is the end of FB you should put the pipe down. I guarantee majority of users don’t care. Also the fact that FB isn’t just for apple folks there are plenty of other phones, tablets etc. you don’t have to worry. You can still use it even after this update
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Whatsapp clearly said that if they implement this you can't use the App without allowing tracking.
This might be true for Facebook as well as other Apps.
 
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So if I go to sign in on the PlayStation page it will ask if they can track me when I say no it ask again and won’t even let me log in?
 
Rydawg96 said:
Anyone else still have the option greyed out after the update?
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Yes, I have the same problem across all my devices. On my iPhone, iPad and Mac this option is greyed out. SO annoying...Thought it had something to do with screen time settings and restrictions but they were already turned off.
 
just curious, what do people do that's so high profile that they are so worried about being used for ads?

And also, why doesn't this article mention on the bottom of the same privacy settings page, there's a separate section on apple's advertising settings that tracks your location, app usage, search, etc that's ALWAYS default on?
 
So wait, just to be clear, we want the toggle switch to be in the left position? So this automatically tells Apps not to follow me or will the alert come up? Perhaps I am the only one confused with how this feature works.
 
MoreAwesomeDanU said:
just curious, what do people do that's so high profile that they are so worried about being used for ads?

And also, why doesn't this article mention on the bottom of the same privacy settings page, there's a separate section on apple's advertising settings that tracks your location, app usage, search, etc that's ALWAYS default on?
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To your first question: it's not as simple as that. I've seen very elaborate behavior across websites. For instance you may be searching for some stuff on Google, say vacuum cleaners. On the next day you open Amazon and are being presented with a Flash Deal for a vacuum cleaner without you ever having searched for vacuum cleaners on Amazon. But even that's still OK. Then you go back to Google to research that particular model and you are presented with top-results that contain favorable reviews. You purchase the product and realize it's rubbish. And then you ask someone else to search Google for the same product and suddenly he gets a very different search result where you will see very different reviews. This is bordering on fraud. Yes, it's a real case, mine.

To your second question. Apple doesn't share your information with third parties. It's Apple who uses that information to choose the ads to show but the advertiser doesn't know that.
 
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jclo said:
For those who have this toggle grayed out and are not able to toggle it back on, it seems to be a bug that first popped up in beta. Some people have had luck fixing it by signing out of iCloud and signing in again.
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Still having issues with this, and mine is still greyed out.

Anyone had any luck resolving this?
 
dlewis23 said:
No they can't just track you anyways if you say do not track with the IDFA. If you choose to not track the IDFA returns 0 so they can't track you with that ID and they can only ask once.

That being said, there is nothing to stop them from trying to come up with or use other basic menthols to track you.

I believe that IP address are going to become very important for tracking you and mobile providers will start to have a static IP address assigned to each phone and then offer your data to ad providers as a way to track you.
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My IP changes every night. What influence would that have on what ads I am seeing
 
nholm said:
I think the intention of the switch is pretty clear. Not the implementation.
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Actually it's not. It doesn't make clear that if it's off they can't track you. The prompt is only about asking. So if they can't ask, can they still track?
 
I don't have Facebook BUT I do have Instagram (Facebook owned). Will be nice to not search for iPhone cases, AW bands on Amazon or Safari and then instantly seeings ads for shady junk companies selling crap cases and watch bands constantly on my Instagram feed.

Let's see if that works.
 
The only thing that has asked me to track was PlayStation.com. When I click no it wouldn’t even allow me to log into the sign. Kind of messed up
 
nwcs said:
I can’t envision a single reason why I would want to allow any app to track me for advertising. It’s not like all these so-called personalized ads were ever relevant to me. I’d rather be given the option to pay and not have any ads/tracking of any variety (including metrics) or as generic as possible if I’m not allowed the option.
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Pay for your own privacy?

What's next? Paying for the air you breathe?
 
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This implementation means well, but it has been disastrous. I for one think that if you place the do not track option. All tracking should be eliminated (including the now IDFA) even if you previously said yes to tracking. But it's a mess.
 
Remember when all apps used to be better on iOS? Now companies like Facebook and others will do the bare minimum while putting all the new fancy stuff on the Android app.
 
Guys and gals, you need to calm down. The feature is not broken. The app needs to be submitted to the App Store using the latest SDK which gives The prompt. The next time Facebook issues an update for their app and you download it, the first time you run it, you should see the prompt.
 
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