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Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

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Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#321
I loth Apple. I am a Apple developer and it is painful. After thirty years sticking to Unix like systems, Apple is not!

That said I am very impressed that they turn off apps access to the UUID for the device by default. Bless them. There is more money to be made, I would have thought, by going down the well trodden path of avarice, duplicity, and self deception that Google has trodden. Well done Apple.

(Perhaps I am wrong and there is some nefarious plan for world domination behind their moves - just because I cannot see it does not mean it is not there!)

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#322
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's really a shame. It has the power to make an even larger dent in the epidemic. This is the cult of ignorance at play, where mistrust of all institutions (heavily fueled by need to get clicks to serve ads) means we can't have nice things.

I’m not ignorant just because I don’t want to be tracked, and slinging insults like this just reaffirms my beliefs :)

It's not an insult directed at a single person. I'm echoing Isaac Asimov's critique of American culture: https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_C...

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#323
post #295
post #277

Why would you enable it? What possible benefit is there in doing so? The ads won't get better regardless of the data they have on you. They aren't exactly using ML or AI to help you get better ads. Its really just boring data queries in SQL or some graph language. That's the sum total of most advertising intelligence. Its not 21st century high tech. Its mostly relational databases with some NoSQL to make that table l…

Disclaimer: I did not opt in to tracking. However... I'm not sure how the discussion about the technology behind ad targeting is relevant to the end user. The point is that it -works- and that the ads shown to the user are indeed more likely to pique their interests. As an end user, I don't -care- whether the backend is using AI/ML or a relational database—I care that by enabling tracking, I get more relevant ads.

> the ads shown to the user are indeed more likely to pique their interests

They're more likely to convert the targeted user. That's not the same thing.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#324
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your choice to be ignorant about the contact tracing frameworks is your own, but please stop spreading misinformation: https://www.google.com/covid19/exposurenotifications/#exposu... There were many locations who built their own apps that did not follow this privacy model, or used it incorrectly, but for most cases "your location data being put into some database" is not accurate.

There is no amount of mental gymnastics you can do to turn “app that tracks when yours and other phones are together and does about it” into something that is inside my moral boundaries.

Then I'd suggest you're not being reasonable at all, because the way it works is entirely consistent with a privacy-first methodology.

That by the way is to take the database that's only on your phone (and never uploaded) and show only you an alert. That's it.

If this is immoral, but letting covid spread around the world and have people needlessly suffer because you refuse reasonable interventions, then I don't know what is moral.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it wasn’t hastily built, and the tracking isn’t controlled by a gov agency in the nefarious way that you’re implying.

The Canadian version of the app recently added “secure anonymous usage statistics”, which aren’t particularly anonymous (since all we have is their word that they don’t log your IP), and that aren’t particu secure (messages are encrypted with HTTPS but it’s not too difficult to infer the contents of the message based on their length). And, you can’t opt out of them. I still have it on my phone (although at least with…

AFAIK they don't gain access to the BLE contact database on your phone, so what exactly is it that they could be transmitting of concern?

What are you able to infer about the contents exactly?

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#326

I just want to point out that Apple is ostensibly doing this in the name of transparency, and yet here we have a whole thread of technologically proficient people debating what the setting actually means. Does it mean that if the users don't know about this option in the settings they will never be prompted to allow tracking, and just implicitly disallow it? If that's the case, the prompt is just transparency theater…

Right next to the togglswitch, there’s a learn more link that explains in more detail...

Tracking Apple requires app developers to ask for permission before they track you or your device across apps or websites they don’t own in order to target advertising to you, measure your actions due to advertising, or to share your information with data brokers. If you give your permission to be tracked, the app can allow information about you or your device collected through the app (for example, a user or device ID, your device's current advertising identifier, your name, email address, or other identifying data provided by you) to be combined with information about you or your device collected by third parties. The combined information can then be used by the app developer or third parties for purposes of targeted advertising or advertising measurement. The app developer may also choose to share the information with data brokers, which may result in the linking of publicly available and other information about you or your device. When you decline to give permission for the app to track you, the app is prevented from accessing your device's advertising identifier (previously controlled through the Limit Ad Tracking setting on your device). App developers are responsible for ensuring they comply with your choices. In some circumstances, the app developer is not required by Apple to ask for your permission. The app developer may combine information about you or your device for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes without your permission if the developer is doing so solely on your device and not sending the information off your device in a way that identifies you. In addition, the app developer may share information about you or your device with data brokers without your permission for fraud detection or prevention or security purposes. However, the data broker must be performing the fraud detection or prevention or security services only on behalf of the app developer, which means the data broker cannot use the information about you or your device for any other purposes. You can control whether apps can ask for permission to track you. If you don't want to be asked for your permission by each app that wants to track you, you can disable Allow Apps to Ask to Track. On iOS and iPadOS, go to Settings > Privacy > Tracking. On tvOS, go to Settings > General > Privacy > Tracking. When you disable Allow Apps to Ask to Track, any app that attempts to ask for your permission will be blocked from asking and automatically informed that you have requested not to be tracked. If you previously gave apps permission to track, you can tell those apps to stop tracking you at the same time you disable Allow Apps to Ask to Track. You can also control the tracking permission on a per-app basis. On iOS or iPadOS, go to Settings, tap an app, then tap to turn off Allow Tracking, or go to Settings > Privacy > Tracking and tap to turn on or off each app displayed in the list of apps that have requested permission to track you. On tvOS, go to Settings > General > Privacy > Tracking and select the app in the list below Tracking.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple and ad companies are worlds apart.

Until they launch an ads service (which they are almost certainly going to do).

They already have one

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#328

I've seen a lot of people confused by this, so I figured I'd clear it up: "App tracking" here means reading your device ID, called the 'Identity For Advertisers' (IDFA for short). They do this so that they can cross reference that IDFA with data that other apps have collected on that same IDFA, allowing them to connect the dots that it's the same user. This app tracking transparency feature makes it so that they can'…

Facebook and Amazon can both track you individually and correlate accounts because you need an account under your real name to use the service. They can just choose to share this information with each other. This only prevents services from using IDFA to correlate pseudonymous accounts or across services that don't require accounts at all.

I especially don't understand the complaint from Facebook with reference to the four plus apps they have where users may very well just use the same account. As it stands, they've been wildly inconsistent about this. Here is Mark Zuckerberg only six weeks ago claiming this change would be good for Facebook: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/as-apple-app-trackin...

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#329
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or did the government interfere with the market by not protecting privacy to begin with?

Worse, they interfered with citizen's right to a pursuit of happiness.

The joy of Monopoly.

Re: Analytics suggest 96% of users leave app tracking disabled in iOS 14.5

#330
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that’s not what the exposure notification APIs did at all. Location is never tracked or transmitted to anyone. What exactly would you have been concerned about?

It is literally impossible to submit any exposure alert without including location data, and then it can reasonably be assumed that all the matched bluetooth device IDs were within the same general vicinity as well. Have you ever used a GeoIP database?

You clearly don't understand how the system works, there is no data related to location involved.
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