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Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

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Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#331

Post by _the_inflator »

endymi0n wrote: post #29
ThePhysicist wrote: post #22

In Europe, cross-app, cross-browser & cross-device tracking is on very thin ice legally under the GDPR, so I'm not surprised Apple finally curbs the use of "sticky" identifiers on their devices. Honestly, it's a bit shameful that a device that is marketed as the gold standard in privacy would even support such an identifier in the first place, it has literally no purpose beyond mining peoples' data. Now that the thir…

Having been on both sides of the table, I would slightly disagree here. Fraud prevention for example will get an order of magnitude harder, plus this move will further skew the playing field towards FAANG who have the resources to puzzle the scraps back together for decent conversion tracking with the help of logins, IPs, SDKs with First Party IDs and a massive dose of machine learning.

I agree here.

Apple's privacy changes might seem like a good idea from the outside, but essentially or paradoxically leads to higher entry barriers for new competitors and cement the role the actual players have.

However, we do not have experience with so-called "big tech." It is relatively new, iPhone came to light in 2007. So I regard Apple's measurements as another experiment, and we will see how things further evolve.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#332

Post by jefftk »

thatcat wrote: post #328
jefftk wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1: I expect this will translate to the majority of traffic will not have IDFA available, either by apps not wanting to annoy users by asking, or users saying no. 2: On a single request, yes. But users typically make very large numbers of requests over time. The pattern of requests that you'd see from a real user looks pretty different than what you'd see from a bot.

>2 Of course they look different over time, isn't the problem here that same data can be used to do statistical analysis for other purposes than fraud prevention?

I'm responding here to willstrafach 's claim that "The IDFA is just a simple static UUID. It cannot do a very good job at preventing fraud" and wil421's earlier "Can you explain how Apple’s anti tracking measures are going to hurt small business and make fraud easier?"

But yes, of course IDFA can be used for things other than ad fraud detection.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#333

Post by kop316 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #224
izacus wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a reminder (from first hand experience with mobile development for major companies), the iOS versions of those apps do the same. Even more so, all of those tracking SDKs are targeting iOS first, Android second. Please don't feel safe on iOS just because Apple marketing is blasting misleading claims at you.

That's weird. How come they say nothing about iOS?

My assumption would be it's a lot more difficult to reverse engineer apps on iOS.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#335

Post by adamlett »

_the_inflator wrote: post #331
endymi0n wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been on both sides of the table, I would slightly disagree here. Fraud prevention for example will get an order of magnitude harder, plus this move will further skew the playing field towards FAANG who have the resources to puzzle the scraps back together for decent conversion tracking with the help of logins, IPs, SDKs with First Party IDs and a massive dose of machine learning.

I agree here. Apple's privacy changes might seem like a good idea from the outside, but essentially or paradoxically leads to higher entry barriers for new competitors and cement the role the actual players have. However, we do not have experience with so-called "big tech." It is relatively new, iPhone came to light in 2007. So I regard Apple's measurements as another experiment, and we will see how things further ev…

Apple's privacy changes might seem like a good idea from the outside, but essentially or paradoxically leads to higher entry barriers for new competitors and cement the role the actual players have.

Honestly, who cares if the barrier of entry for a shitty business model is raised. And can see only upside to this.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#336

Post by sharkjacobs »

orangepanda wrote: post #326
t-writescode wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just spun terms in your own comment. > those are revenue figures, not profit > $10 billion from Google out of $60 billion in profit is significant

What expenses are there to keep google the default engine?

Revenue and profit measure the total income of a business, not just one discrete business deal.

If they stop making, marketing, and selling hundreds of millions of iPhones Google would probably stop paying them for default search status.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#337

Post by halversonmd »

bluesign wrote: post #323
dialtone wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't do mobile advertising but this is just incorrect... Most of Google's revenue comes from Search and that has nothing to do with IDFA. Then how would third parties with no access to first party data compete when there's no more third party data would be something I'm curious for you to explain.

Ok first of all I am not saying that third parties without access to first party data will compete with google's search ad business. I think after removal of IDFA, smaller ad networks will steal some of big players mobile market share. And mobile advertising will not move to search based advertisement as much as you think. Maybe some revenue will shift there, but I think lose on mobile side will be bigger.

Google's search revenue accounts for around 95% of it's top line revenue.

Google’s ability to protect its core revenue stream is squarely in the “not impacted” category when it comes to Apple's IDFA move.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#339

Post by adamlett »

jefftk wrote: post #204
rndgermandude wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad fraud... How exactly is this my problem as a consumer? This sounds pretty much like a "you" (ad networks and advertisers) problem... So why should you be allowed to spy on me - who never defrauded any advertisers - to fix your problem?

> How exactly is this my problem as a consumer? When you use a service that is funded by advertising, the service only gets that funding because the advertisers trust that they are getting their ads in front of real users. Some advertisers are able to precisely measure the quality of their traffic, for example by seeing whether the traffic they get buys things, but most are in businesses where that's not possible (no…

When you use a service that is funded by advertising, the service only gets that funding because the advertisers trust that they are getting their ads in front of real users.

Ad spend as a percentage of GDP has been surprisingly constant for the past century. IOW, companies do not spend more on ads just because they can better target their potential customers, nor will they spend less if they lose that ability.

Re: Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

#340

Post by sp527 »

closeparen wrote: post #297
ogre_codes wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fraud prevention for example will get an order of magnitude harder, First Ad Fraud != Fraud. It is low grade hacking. Second. Trading the privacy of every iPhone user so that advertisers can prop up a sketchy/ poor industry is a terrible trade.

This completely changes the game on all kinds of fraud, not just ad fraud. Currently when you get caught, the service you’re abusing bans your device. To keep trying you need new hardware; attacks have a real monetary cost for the attacker. When your iPhone can present itself as infinitely many iPhones, this is neutered, and services will need different (probably more invasive) techniques to keep banned users away.

This is an incomplete understanding of iOS. You can hardware ban an iPhone by flipping an app-reserved bit.
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