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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: 2) by NateMich on Friday August 28 2020, @01:45AM (4 children)
As a Android user, is it possible on iOS to block ads system wide like I'm currently doing?
If so, I might consider switching back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @02:03AM (3 children)
Apple, doing something good? (or at least ostensibly good showcasing, meanwhile in the back...) At least it looks like they are protecting _one_ piece of info about the(ir) device. Dunno about Android - I run a very old phone, as a phone. Computing is done on a .. computer (laptop). May be "old school" but this works for me.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Friday August 28 2020, @02:45AM
Or is this pretending to and we're not supposed to consider this has been permitted until now? Is this only because there is publicity about the practice now? Or that it'd be exposed by the Fortnite lawsuits?
So... what replacement thing is permitted now or soon?
Or is the change that the behavioral tracking has to be purchased from Apple now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @10:57AM
Come now, laptops are not really computers either.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday August 29 2020, @10:04PM
More likely they have figured out how to do this to benefit themselves, rather than Facebook. Further updates to be rolled out...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @01:47AM (1 child)
Fuckbook shouting out:
"Apple trying kill our jerbs!!!"
Is that what this post is about?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 28 2020, @02:37AM
Let's put it together with Apple decision to kick out Epic Games and let's see what gives.**
Because in both cases it is about "Apple trying kill our jerbs!!!".
---
** In my case, it gives nothing. I'm not using iOS (other than the development I'm paid for), neither Facebook nor do I care about Fortnite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday August 28 2020, @02:08AM (1 child)
And that's bad... because?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 28 2020, @02:41AM
Watch out for potential court suits which may put a stop to that [soylentnews.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Friday August 28 2020, @02:31AM (10 children)
I gotta say that its nice to see a company doing something like this for privacy.
I had an Iphone for the first 10 years of cell phones. I now have an android. I can not stand this android phone I have. Its a Samsung ThinQ on the Tmobile network. I am not sure if I got suckered or if this is how they all are. The interface is not intuitive, back doesn't always mean back. There are ads all over everything. Not even a basic flashlight on the thing and I don't feel like programming one myself without ads.
Sure, this means that apple will own 30% of the market, and good for them for sticking it to Facebook. While I normally don't enjoy walled gardens, I'd rather choose this walled garden than the open conglomerated mess that Facebook, Google and Amazon have become.
The difference between my time on both of the systems has me firmly wanting an IPhone again. I am now willing to pay the extra bucks for the simple interface that just works. I am willing to pay extra money to a company that pays this type of granular attention to these little things.
In the end, its the little things. Even if my ads are all from Apple, I'm fine with that anymore. They've all won.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Booga1 on Friday August 28 2020, @04:56AM
When I got a Nexus One, Android phones still had a dedicated [menu] button and the back button worked as a back button. It really felt intuitive and well behaved. Not anymore!
Now the physical menu button is gone and the apps have to implement it themselves and keep it on screen. The back button sometimes takes you back, sometimes it exits the app, and sometimes it opens the home screen. Everything depends on the app you were in and the screen you were on in that app. It's really annoying how inconsistent it is, even on native apps like text messaging. When viewing texts I have about a 25% chance of the back button taking me to a previous text from a different person, the main text message list, the same person's text messages I was viewing, or the home screen.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by toddestan on Friday August 28 2020, @07:05AM (1 child)
The problem is you've got a Samsung phone. Samsung takes Android and completely revamps it, replacing most of Android's built-in functionality with their own, crappy special Samsung versions. It all comes off to me as being a bad copy of the iPhone. The iPhone is too good to have a back button, of course. So Samsung tries to copy that. Except Android has a back button, and Samsung can't quite get rid of it completely. So instead the just turn it into a giant mess.
My recommendation would be to get a phone that runs close to stock Android. The obvious choice is the Google Pixel phones, but there are lots of others.
With that said, Android still sucks balls, it just manages to be slightly better than iOS and you have a choice decent unlocked non-Samsung Android phones for like half the cost of the cheapest iPhone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Oakenshield on Friday August 28 2020, @01:25PM
Nope. Samsung does NOT make the ThinQ. LG does. Android on the LG is pretty close to standard. They throw in a couple of features you can disable but they are out of the way. My ThinQ has a flashlight app built it, is not inundated with ads and works pretty bog standard. My guess is that he is stuck on the Apple way and doesn't want to learn how to use Android.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @01:18PM
*cough* *cough*
(Score: 3, Informative) by Oakenshield on Friday August 28 2020, @01:21PM (5 children)
LG makes the ThinQ, not Samsung. I have a V35 and I love it. I have a flashlight when swiping down the settings. Are you sure you're holding it right?
It was only a small adjustment going from vanilla Android on a Nexus, but I don't see any ads except on the web when I'm not on my Pi Hole protected WiFi or using Brave the rest of the time. I had an iPhone back in the 3gs days and I certainly wouldn't go back. I got tired of the Apple way of requiring IOS upgrades just to install almost anything from the app store after an IOS update. An unsupported phone was basically useless.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Friday August 28 2020, @08:56PM (4 children)
Yes, you're right. LQ, not Samsung.
Interesting you have a flashlight when you swipe down. I don't. Wish I did. I double checked when I read your post hoping I had just missed it.
Holding it right? Yes, I am currently holding it correctly though I'm considering using a rock skipping hold on it soon; right before I fling it into a lake.
Regardless of my mix-up in brand, I think the phone is junk. I wish daily I had never spent a dime on the thing.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Monday August 31 2020, @06:40PM (3 children)
When you swipe down you get the abbreviated list. A second swipe down gets you the full pulldown list. If you notice, there are two little dots at the bottom of the settings window. A swipe to the left will show you the second screen of quick access settings. The flashlight may be on one of the two latter windows and you missed it. You can configure any of the settings to be anywhere on the pulldowns. I put my flashlight on the first abbreviated list as it is the most quickly accessible.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Tuesday September 01 2020, @02:27PM (2 children)
Well, I'll be. Look at that. A Flashlight! I found it after two swipes. I shared that with a few friends that have had the same issue as well.
You have any idea how to get rid of that google assistant? Mine continuously listens to me and then suggests different things I should be talking to it about. It pops up at random times. I can't figure out how to turn that thing off. Any idea?
And thanks man. Appreciate your help on this. You're removing headaches from my life one feature at a time.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Wednesday September 02 2020, @02:36PM (1 child)
When someone one hands me an iPhone and asks me how to do something, I am surprised at how different the administrative tasks are now from when I had an iPhone. I figured that you were probably still in the mindset of how Apple works. Android is just different. Personally, I would never go back to Apple. There are just too many things that Apple won't let you do that I expect from Android. The funny thing is that I switched to Android all those years ago because of a huge difference ($250 vs $800 at the time) in cost. Now cost isn't so important to me but I would never go back because of that freedom.
Unfortunately, Android does require you to relearn how to use your phone to take advantage of the flexibility and freedom. The link below has a couple of ways to disable Google Assistant. It was never active on my phone because I imported settings from my previous phone and I had disabled it on that one.
https://support.google.com/assistant/thread/894436?hl=en [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Wednesday September 02 2020, @10:16PM
Man.. I tried for a year to remove that and was told so many different things by various types of support that never worked. One would think that with today's internet it would be easy to find something if someone actually wanted you to find it.
That link worked. I was finally able to turn that thing off so it would quit transcribing my conversations and sending them to googles ad (search) machine. It has been recording me and sending my "searches" to google for a year while at the same time Google was telling people "We don't listen to your conversations." I guess they mean that by default they do, but if you can figure out how to turn it off, we don't?
Glad you like it. I can't stand mine and if it weren't for the entire shit show waiting for me when I go to change, I'd to it tomorrow.
Thanks for your help! This phone is now mildly less annoying to me.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kell on Friday August 28 2020, @02:34AM
Let the user-tracking industry die. It adds no value to anyone who isn't trying to exploit the inequality between customers and vendors.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by darkfeline on Friday August 28 2020, @03:12AM (1 child)
I don't do anything with Apple or Facebook, so caveat emptor.
It sounds like they're adding an explicit permission to get a unique ID for the device/user. That's far from the only thing that can be used to identify a user. For example, I'm guessing that apps can access a user's contacts with permission, and it's likely most users will allow the Facebook app to do so. A user's contacts list is more than enough to identify them uniquely.
This does mean more work for Facebook's app developers, but in the long run it sounds like Facebook is going to harvest even more data (user contacts) without a loss in tracking.
The point of advertiser IDs is to have a unique ID advertisers can track, while also not leaking any other user data and making it possible for the user to trivially refresh their advertiser ID and wipe their advertiser slate clean. Once Facebook starts tracking via contact list, users won't be able to reset their tracking ID.
Never forget the law of unintended consequences.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by corey on Friday August 28 2020, @11:16PM
Solution is to not use the Farcebook app. It has a web interface which works. I guess the sheeple will continue to use the app and therefore allow access to contacts.
This is why there are so many companies who heavily promote their apps, even if an app won't provide any more features than their website. For example, the burger shop chain Grill'd has an app, why? I mean why develop an app to do the same thing, and why promote it so much? Personal information access, that's why.
I think the only app I have on my phone which also has a website, is the Australian Bureau Of Metrology. It's pretty trustworthy though.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @07:19AM
You say that like it's a bad thing.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Opportunist on Friday August 28 2020, @10:13AM (2 children)
Facebook, you don't know what that word means. Warning is something you do when something bad is about to happen. What you do is essentially a mom warning her child that there will be cake for desert.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Friday August 28 2020, @01:43PM (1 child)
That would be true if Facebook were warning its users, but they're warning _developers_. Developers who often make use of user surveillance to line their pockets, at least indirectly through integrated ad engines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @03:24PM
Going a step further, Facebook may use this as an excuse to lower developer ad revenue in the future.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Friday August 28 2020, @11:12AM
the upcoming update will hinder our ability to spy on user and leak the data to who knows whom for who knows what kind of return.
But we cannot say that so we will complain about targeting ads, conveniently forgetting that our users already supply us with enough info to publish reasonably targeted ads.
We would weep over it but our CEO is a roughly designed android with no tears canal.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Taibhsear on Friday August 28 2020, @02:44PM
. ← world's smallest violin, playing only for Ad Targeting Businesses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @11:21PM
And whatever came before, if memory serves, they always showed some form of opt out to i was sure this predated what it says now.
Of course, have little or no trust in such statements.