iOS practice: “Allow tracking” – how does Apple’s sniffing block work? | News

The phenomenon is both commonplace and disturbing: You search for a tent on the private auction app and are then flooded with outdoor advertising on the social media app. The mechanism on which this is based is called tracking: users are observed across services, websites and apps, their behavior is evaluated and the resulting profile is offered to advertising marketers. At least at the app level, Apple put a stop to this data collection as early as 2022: “App Tracking Transparency” (ATT) requires apps in the iOS App Store to request consent for device-specific tracking. It can be controlled per app or in general.

By default, every app must ask whether the user agrees to device tracking. When you start it for the first time, an iOS dialog with an orange tracking symbol appears. The user can now grant permission or prevent this using the “Reject app tracking” button. Apple’s App Store requires that this decision must not affect the functionality of an app – all of them must work without tracking consent.

When you first start it, an app asks whether it can track the device.

Readjust under Data Protection & Security
Over time, you will probably accumulate many confirmations or rejections of various apps. iPhone and iPad users can view these at any time and subsequently change their decision. To do this, go to the Settings app and select “Privacy & Security”. There is an entry called “Tracking”. All apps that have requested approval in the past are listed here. The extremely practical general switch is also located here: At the top of the list you decide generally whether third-party apps are allowed to ask for tracking. If you deactivate this switch, you will be spared app-specific requests in the future. Particularly commendable: iOS does not allow the question to be switched off universally. It is therefore not possible to generally allow tracking on iPhone and iPad.

Under Data Protection & Security/Tracking you can readjust device tracking on an app-by-app basis or generally switch it off.

Limited utility
App Tracking Transparency represents a step forward in privacy: users are openly shown that their behavior is being monitored and they are allowed to decide for themselves whether they want this. But ATT is only one factor in what has now become a gigantic tracking industry: Apple uses it to regulate access to the IDFA, a device-specific “Identifier for Advertisers”. Many apps now track usage behavior using alternative methods. This includes obvious (user accounts) as well as secret (so-called fingerprinting). At times, app developers were able to query the uptime (time since the last restart) of a device via push notifications – this allowed a device to be identified quite clearly.

Apple’s apps can do anything
However, Apple has created the biggest gap in device tracking for itself: the ban on device-specific tracking does not apply to its own apps. The Federal Cartel Office already complained about this in 2022. In December, Apple first presented a proposal to revise the function.

Check: What data does Apple collect?
Thanks to the General Data Protection Regulation, every user can see what data a company collects about them. Apple does this via the website privacy.apple.com. After registering with your Apple Account, you decide which data you want to download. It may take up to seven days for the data to be downloadable. For certain information you have to open the dialog again, for example to download data on user behavior in the app stores.

Apple allows users to request and conveniently download the data collected about them.