iOS: asking an app not to track you would be useless

Lockdown Privacyis a free and open source platform that blocks trackers used by publishers to better understand your behavior by tracking it on iPhone. This complements the ATT, a suite of changes announced by Apple with iOS 14 and aimed precisely at blocking developers subscribing to this approach when the user decides to do so. To do this, he would just have to choose “Ask the app not to track my activities” when his device suggests it.

During research shared by theWashington Post(newspaper now owned by Jeff Bezos), however, it has just been proven that these measures are ineffective. In fact, theapp tracking transparencydoes not reduce the number of trackers used byadvertisers, who already have alternatives to circumvent this limitation. What's more, the proposed Cupertino solution would only have a reduced impact on the total number of telecommunications with third parties. It is the latter who most often receive consumer data, in order to process it on behalf of our applications.

Respect for private life, an illusion?

According to Lockdown Privacy, personal data and statistics on the iPhone are collected even when you tap “Ask the app not to track my activities“. Several specific apps have also been pinned following these discoveries. We can notably cite the mobile game Subway Surfers, which among other things continues to transmit figures (battery level, system version, operator, etc.) to Facebook in complete discretion.The runner had already been the subject of suspicion last September.

Another example: restaurant recommendations with Yelp, which sends targeting information to Facebook via its Graph API and to Branch. More precisely, here are thirty-nine trackers which continue to be active even after choosing to block cross-application tracking. That is only three less than having authorized it.

Note also that some, like Starbucks coffee shops, still do not take the trouble to ask Internet users for their consent. Here, the providers are Google Analytics and New Relic. As for the good student in the story, it is once again only Telegram with no tracking detected.

Apple responds

Fred Sainz, Apple spokesperson, has already reacted to the matter:

“For Apple, tracking must be completely controllable and transparent to users. If we discover that a developer is violating their choices, we will work with them to resolve the issue, orthe evening bans from the App Store“.