Apple’s latest Ad Tracking Safeguards
As one of the last remaining stalwarts of Silicon valley that still commands the majority of its revenue selling hardware, Apple is perhaps the least interested (out of the big 4 i.e Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google) in tracking and monetizing user activity. Over the years it has been emphasizing that its products are designed to prioritize privacy over data collection. Apple recently in WWDC 2020 said it will double down on data protection in its upcoming iOS 14 and Safari releases.
Although the software changes are extensive, below is a quick cheatsheet to understand what the tech giant has up its’ sleeve. It touches on 3 main areas of Apple Software.
Safari
Safari (after upgrade to macOS Big Sur) will soon start including a specific “Privacy Report” to break down what specifically Safari is blocking because of unauthorized data collection methods. It will also start giving the users more insight into which trackers are cropping up in their daily browsing.
Email Share Blocking & Signing in with Apple
This feature has been Apple’s big push into the identity market. At it’s annual conference, Apple said that its privacy-focused single sign-on product “Sign in with Apple” has been used to make more than 200 million accounts. This sign in method has a default setting in which the users’ email is not shared with the application developer making it arguably more privacy centered than some other methods like “Sign in with Facebook/Google” etc. in which emails are shared.
Apps on iOS 14
Apple’s tracking controls will extend to iOS 14 more broadly as well. In iOS 14, users will see a prompt when an app is trying to track them across services. Users will have the option to “Allow Tracking” or “Ask App Not to Track.” If a user doesn’t consent to tracking, the app won’t be able to access a type of identifier often used in targeted advertising and other tracking called the IDFA identifier.
By implementing these 3 basic but powerful changes, Apple definitely seems determined to cement it’s place as the most privacy-friendly technology offering out there. This is a very different and opposite approach in privacy architecture compared to the products that are offered by some of its main competitors on the software side — Google and Facebook.
We at Eulerity support these enhanced measures that Apple has been taking to make the internet a better domain for user privacy. We believe that in the end, every user should have full control and choice over their data (and with whom they want to share it). Our software and policies are designed by keeping the same principles close to our heart.
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