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Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature has arrived — here’s what you need to know
The latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system — iOS 14.5 — is launching today, and with it comes a much-discussed new privacy feature called App Tracking Transparency.
The feature was first announced nearly a year ago, although the company delayed the launch to give developers more time to prepare. Since then, support for the feature has already gone live in iOS and some apps have already adopted it (for example, I’ve seen tracking requests from Duolingo and Venmo), but now Apple says it will actually start enforcing the new rules.
That means iPhone owners will start seeing many more privacy prompts as they continue using their regular apps, each one asking for permission to “track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites.” Every app that requests tracking permission will also show up in a Tracking menu within your broader iOS Privacy settings, allowing you to toggle tracking on and off any time — for individual apps, or for all of them.
What does turning tracking on or off actually do? If you say no to tracking, the app will no longer be able to use Apple’s IDFA identifier to share data about your activity with data brokers and other third parties for ad-targeting purposes. It also means the app can no longer use other identifiers (like hashed email addresses) to track you, although it may be more challenging for Apple to actually enforce that part of the policy.
Image Credits: Apple
There’s been intense debate around App Tracking Transparency in the lead up to its launch. The pro-ATT side is pretty easy to explain: There’s a tremendous amount of personal information and activity that’s being collected about consumers without their consent (as Apple outlined in a report called A Day in the Life of Your Data), and this gives us a simple way to control that sharing.
However, Facebook has argued that by dealing a serious blow to ad targeting, Apple is also hurting small businesses that depend on targeting to affordable, effective ad campaigns.
The social network even took out ads in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post declaring that it’s “standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere.” (The Electronic Frontier Foundation dismissed the campaign as “a laughable attempt from Facebook to distract you from its poor track record of anticompetitive behavior and privacy issues as it tries to derail pro-privacy changes from Apple that are bad for Facebook’s business.”)
Others have suggested that these changes could do “existential” damage to some developers and advertisers, while also benefiting Apple’s bottom line.
The full impact will depend, in part, on how many people choose to opt out of tracking. It’s hard to imagine many normal iPhone owners saying yes when these prompts start to appear — especially since developers are not allowed to restrict any features based on who opts into or out of tracking. However, mobile attribution company AppsFlyer says that early data suggests that opt-in rates could be as high as 39%.
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Apple shares more details about its imminent App Tracking Transparency feature
Apple is sharing more details today about its upcoming App Tracking Transparency feature, which will allow users to control, on an app-by-app level, whether their data is shared for ad-targeting purposes.
In a sense, anyone using the current version of iOS can see App Tracking Transparency in action, since iOS already includes a Tracking menu in the Privacy settings, and some apps have already started asking users for permission to track them.
But when iOS 14.5 (currently in developer beta) is released to the general public sometime in early spring, Apple will actually start enforcing its new rules, meaning that iPhone users will probably start seeing a lot more requests. Those requests will appear at various points during the usage of an app, but they’ll all carry a standardized message asking whether the app can “track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites,” followed by a customized explanation from the developer.
Once an app has asked for this permission, it will also show up in the Tracking menu, where users can toggle app tracking on and off at any time. They also can enable app tracking across all apps or opt out of these requests entirely with a single toggle.
One point worth emphasizing — something already stated on Apple’s developer website but not entirely clear in media reports (including our own) — is that these rules aren’t limited to the IDFA identifier. Yes, IDFA is what Apple controls directly, but a company spokesperson said that when a user opts out of tracking, Apple will also expect developers to stop using any other identifiers (such as hashed email addresses) to track users for ad targeting purposes, and not to share that information with data brokers.
This does not, however, stop developers from tracking users across multiple apps if all those apps are operated by a single company.
The Apple spokesperson also said that Apple’s own apps will abide by these rules — you won’t see any requests from Apple, however, since it doesn’t track users across third-party apps for ad targeting purposes. (As previously noted, there’s a separate Personalized Ads option that determines whether Apple can use its own first-party data to target ads.)
Facebook has been particularly vocal in criticizing the change, arguing that this will hurt small businesses who use targeting to run effective ad campaigns, and that the change benefits Apple’s bottom line.
Apple has pushed back against criticism in privacy-focused speeches, as well as in a report called A Day in the Life of Your Data, which lays out how users are actually tracked and targeted. In fact, the report has just been updated with more information about ad auctions, ad attribution and Apple’s own advertising products — SKAdNetwork, which tracks app installs after ads are viewed, and Private Click Measurement, which tracks how ads drive users to websites (but uses on-device data processing).
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