[devinl]

Apple's search ads are projected to be one of the largest online advertisers in terms of ads revenue in 2020 (they have larger advertising revenue projections than both snap and twitter). Device sales in general are dropping so they are expected to continue to invest in this area of their business. Given that Apple is a large organization known for their lack of transparency, I would be very surprised if they weren't already doing shady things with user data for targeting purposes.

[millstone]

Apple says in their "Approach to Privacy" that Maps usage "can’t be tied to your Apple ID" and that no ads can access data from Maps.

These are strong unequivocal statements. We should all be very surprised if they're outright lying.

[yRetsyM]

Can't is the wrong statement. The can be. Whether they choose not to or not is a different conversation, but technically they definitely can tie these together from IP address alone.

I get frustrated with the hoodwink that Apple seems to be playing, as they move to services based revenue I have no doubt these lines are going to get blurrier and blurrier.