If you spend a lot of time shopping online, you may be familiar with the creepy sensation that appears when you click on a pair of shoes, and find that there will be a pair of ads that are perfect for you next week on every website and app you visit.
A new feature of the iPhone in iOS 14.5 is designed to give you the option to turn off ad tracking in the apps you use, making your online life more private.
On Monday, iOS 14.5 came with App Tracking Transparency. Unless you explicitly grant permission to an application, the application will not be able to use your data for targeted advertising, share your location data with advertisers, or share your advertising with third parties ID or any other identifier.
This change-first announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2020-has been supported by privacy advocates and criticism from companies such as Facebook, which said it will harm its advertising business.
This move, along with Apple’s other efforts to improve transparency and privacy, recently called “fundamental human rights” by CEO Tim Cook. In December last year, with the release of iOS 14.3, users began to see the app “nutrition label”, which informs you of the data the app needs before you download the data from the App Store.
Here is how to use the new app tracking transparency feature to control which apps can track you.
How to opt-out of application tracking for new applications:
When you download and open a new app, you will receive a notification asking if you want the app to track the activity on other companies’ apps and websites. You will also see information about what the application will track. You can click “Ask the application not to track” or “Allow”.
You can also choose to stop application tracking for each application you download by going to “Settings”> “Privacy”> “Tracking” and disabling “Allow the application to request tracking”.
This means that any application that tries to ask for your permission will be prohibited from asking and will automatically notify you that you have requested not to be tracked. According to Apple, all applications will be prohibited from accessing information used for advertising on your device.
It’s important to note that this does not mean that the ad will disappear. This simply means that you are more likely to see general ads than to click on the ads for the same pair of shoes at once.
How to opt-out of app tracking on your already-downloaded apps:
For applications that have been downloaded and may have tracking permissions set, you can still turn these permissions on or off for each application.
Under “Settings”, click an app, and then click to turn off “Allow Tracking”. Or, go to “Settings”> “Privacy”> “Tracking” and tap to turn on or off each app you will see in the list of apps that request permission to track activities.
All application developers must request tracking permission. If Apple learns that developers are tracking users who have asked not to be tracked, they will need to update their apps, otherwise, they may face rejection from the app store.
Apple believes that this type of privacy feature is what makes its products unique. Cook has said that because the company’s business model is not based on selling advertising, it can focus on privacy.
