Facebook complains, Apple responds: iOS 14's big privacy change gets postponed:
Apple has postponed full enforcement of a feature of its upcoming iOS 14 software for iPhones that would require app developers to request users' permission to track them across apps for advertising purposes. This announcement comes in the wake of a public complaint from Facebook that the privacy policy could negatively impact the ad market in Apple's ecosystem.
The feature, announced at Apple's annual developer conference in June, would require app developers to notify a user of an app's intent to track the user's IDFA (ID for Advertisers). IDFA is used to track the user's behavior across multiple apps and deliver targeted ads based on that behavior. The change would also require the user to opt in to that tracking.
Apple's developer portal states:
In addition, on iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and tvOS 14, apps will be required to receive user permission to track users across apps or websites owned by other companies, or to access the device's advertising identifier. We are committed to ensuring users can choose whether or not they allow an app to track them. To give developers time to make necessary changes, apps will be required to obtain permission to track users starting early next year. More information, including an update to the App Store Review Guidelines, will follow this fall.
Previously:
iOS 14 Privacy Settings Will Tank Ad Targeting Business, Facebook Warns
Related Stories
iOS 14 privacy settings will tank ad targeting business, Facebook warns:
Facebook is warning developers that privacy changes in an upcoming iOS update will severely curtail its ability to track users' activity across the entire Internet and app ecosystem and prevent the social media platform from serving targeted ads to users inside other, non-Facebook apps on iPhones.
The next version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 14, is expected to hit an iPhone near you this fall. Along with its many new consumer-facing features, iOS 14 requires app developers to notify users if their app collects a unique device code, known as an IDFA (ID for Advertisers).
[...] The changes requiring users to opt in make the IDFA essentially useless, Facebook warned developers today. Facebook apps on iOS 14—which includes Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and a host of others—will no longer collect users' IDFA.
When I read that, I had an inexplicable grin come to my face.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DavePolaschek on Friday September 04 2020, @12:57PM
This is is definitely a disappointing time for Apple to start listening to developer complaints. Not horribly surprising, given facebook’s reach, especially with an upcoming election, but disappointing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @01:19PM (1 child)
-You can't TELL them we are spying on them, then they wont let us spy!
-oh, ok.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday September 04 2020, @02:42PM
In 2020, you have to have been living under one massive rock to think Facebook - or Google, or Amazon, or Microsoft, or indeed Apple, or any goddamn big data company - isn't tracking you. Nobody needs Apple to tell them that. And that's the scary part: peoeple know, yet they don't give a rat's ass and wallow in social media unreservedly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @04:08PM
You just know there was one.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FuzzyTheBear on Friday September 04 2020, @04:33PM
Backing off from implementing limitations because the advertisers cry foul is simply straight cowardice and turning your backs to the usefrs. Privacy has taken a beating in recent years because you thought money was more importangt than people. This is dangerous. Not only to you but to us. Trust in a software is primordial. Ifi know the software i use is a traitor , that it selle me out , allows anyone to track me , read what i say and do and keeps that in a database without my consent , stealthily in the dark at every keystroke then i wont use it .
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday September 04 2020, @10:35PM
How do you manipulate the IDFA to render it useless?