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IPhone users around the world began receiving a series of unknown messages on Monday after downloading the latest software update from Apple: Want to keep track?
Ten months after Apple promised it “Improved privacy features” for iPhones, the changes have finally come with iOS 14.5, though strong protests from Apple rivals and antitrust complaints in France and France Germany.
The first time users open each app after the upgrade, they will have a simple question: “Do you allow (app name) to track your activity through other companies’ apps and websites?”
There will be two possible answers: “Ask the app not to track” or “Allow”. Application developers will be given some space to advocate for tracking, but in the face of such a strong decision, most users are expected to say no.
How will the tracking notifications in iOS 14.5 © Apple
What exactly is being followed?
Until now, apps have been able to collect and share with third parties, such as data managers, all kinds of personal information about you, including your location, what other apps you’re using, when you signed in to the app, a encrypted version of your email address, phone number, and a unique number that identifies your iPhone, known as the IDFA (Advertiser ID).
According to Fun Corp, an app developer, “hundreds of billions of user actions and events” are tracked every day. A Washington Post writer was found 5,400 trackers took data from their phone in a single week. Many applications send data to various partners, including Facebook and Google.
As iPhone users move through apps and surf the web, they leave behind crumbs of data every time, including a copy of their IDFA, allowing the online advertising industry to create a profile of their behavior, which advertisers use to deliver supposedly relevant ads to them. .
What happens when I decline tracking?
Apple wants all applications to obtain explicit consent to this behavior. If users turn off the first time they receive notification, an app will be barred from accessing their IDFA forever. And Apple expects apps not to share other data, including phone numbers or emails.
Will I stop receiving ads?
No, you’ll get the same number of ads, but they won’t be customized. The advertising industry believes that the wording of the initial notification does not adequately explain the value of follow-up.
Users will continue to receive ads, but if they cut off data flow, they will be less relevant and applications will be able to charge the advertiser less.
In short, the ad-based business model that a large number of free apps have relied on is getting hit hard.
How applications should display information about the data they are collecting © Apple
So how do companies feel about it?
The digital advertising industry is worth over $ 350 billion annually and many application developers they are furious.
Facebook, in particular, has created a $ 80 billion a year business by profiling its users and selling personalized ads. The company has published full-page print ads in various newspapers, including the Financial Times, to say the changes will hurt small businesses that will not be able to reach their customers so easily.
He also claimed that Apple used its “dominant position in the market to prefer its own data collection, although it made it almost impossible for its competitors to use the same data.”
“They claim it’s about privacy, but about benefits,” Facebook said. “Don’t fool us.”
Other companies, such as Snap, Twitter and TikTok will also be affected, and many companies that rely on mobile advertising have been experimenting with solutions, both in the US i in China.
More recently, Mark Zuckerberg has hinted that the change could benefit Facebook, however, if it encourages companies to move their budgets away from advertising and direct commerce. Facebook has recently invested in tools to enable more online shopping on its platforms.
The big exception
A company will not ask users if they want to keep track. Google has decided to stop using IDFA altogether.
While it hurts Google to lose access to data from other apps, it already hurts a lot of data from its own set of apps that it can trust.
When an iPhone owner uses Google Search, Maps, Chrome, Gmail, or YouTube, Google can still use that data to create ad profiles, without compromising Apple’s policy change.
What’s for Apple?
For a long time, Apple has made privacy a key selling point of the iPhone, to burn its premium position in the market.
But it can also benefit from other changes.
Without being able to sell the data they collect to third parties, applications will have to resort to charging consumers for their revenue. And Apple has a 15% to 30% commission on all app purchases and subscriptions through the app store.
Meanwhile, Apple also plans to do so expand your own “Privacy-focused” advertising company.
I have an Android phone. Does this affect me?
At the moment, no. But the Google operating system is likely to follow suit in some way. Google is in the process of creating “privacy first” advertising for computers. A similar change seems likely for mobile apps.
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