Can the app monitor my online activity or not? In the future, iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV users will be able to make their own decisions: Apple is the first smartphone provider to provide its customers with an easy way to stop tracking their behavior across various apps and websites. Apple celebrates the new OS as a victory for data protection. On the other hand, online companies like Facebook and media companies that rely on online advertising see the free internet at risk.
In the future, iPhone app providers will have to explicitly ask users to get permission for bulk tracking. App Annie’s analyst firm assumes 90% of users will drop. This has far-reaching consequences, as non-personalized advertising is significantly less effective than ads tailored to the personal interests of the user.
Facebook has been warning for months that this will primarily affect small and medium-sized businesses that rely on personalized advertising on the Internet, especially in the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, several German associations of the advertising and media industries accused Apple of unfair competition and filed a complaint with the Federal Office of the Cartel.
On the other hand, Apple emphasized: “We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right.” “Data belongs to the user,” and they must be able to decide for themselves how their data is used and by whom. “I’ve received support from data protection authorities and officers for the job.” User data on the device has become richer and more private.
In order for application providers to recognize users to personalize advertisements, Apple devices have a unique identification number, IDFA. In the future, application providers will have to explicitly ask for user permission if they wish to access this identifier. The user can then block all tracking requests in settings with a single key.
The federation criticized the group for “essentially excluding all competitors from processing commercially relevant data in the Apple ecosystem.” However, at the same time, Apple is freeing its services from planned changes and collecting large amounts of user data on its own.