Over the past three years, Apple has rolled out a number of new features to ensure its users’ privacy. One of the biggest privacy features is Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, which gives users the ability to control which apps can track their activity and access their data.
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature offers Apple users a simple choice, to allow apps to track their activity or not. If you choose to opt-out, Apple will prevent the app from accessing identifiers that link your device with your activity on an app, usually shared with advertisers to create targeted ads. Unless you give an app explicit permission to track you (including apps made by Apple), it can’t use your data for targeted ads, including sharing your location data, advertising ID or any other identifiers with advertisers or third parties.Â
The feature was first unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in 2020 and was subsequently rolled out to users later that year in iOS 14.5. Since then, Apple has built on these efforts to increase transparency and privacy. In the new iOS 17, Apple made a change that lets users select their default search engine when in private browsing mode, giving users the option to choose a search engine other than Google while in a private Safari tab. Coming in a future iOS update, Apple recently previewed a feature that would make it harder for thieves to access sensitive information on stolen devices.
The impact of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature has been wide-reaching across the tech industry. The feature drew support from privacy advocates but criticism from companies such as Meta, which said the move would hurt its ad business. Meta’s concerns manifested across the board for social media platforms, with a 2021 investigation from the Financial Times estimating that the feature cost Snapchat, Facebook,…
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