[JimDabell]

> it opens Apple up for a lot of regulatory scrutiny given that they were able to flip a switch that annihilated a $50b mobile advertising industry, while making their own equivalent data collection opt-out (vs their competitors' opt-in). Even then, Apple frames their data collection option as "Personalize your experience" while forcing other apps to use the phrase "Allow this app to track you."

No, the phrase is “Allow AppName to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites?”

Apple’s text says: “The Apple advertising platform does not track you. It is designed to protect your privacy and does not follow you across apps and websites owned by other companies.”

These are not equivalent, they are the opposite of one another; one is about tracking you across third-party apps and websites, whilst the other is about not tracking you across third-party apps and websites. Of course they need different descriptions.

[EForEndeavour]

For anyone else curious about what exactly Apple means by "track" in the phrase "The Apple advertising platform does not track you": https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...

> Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, and does not share user or device data with data brokers.

What Apple's advertising platform does do is personalize ads based on your keyboard language settings, device type, OS version, mobile carrier, connection type, device location if you've enabled Location Services and you've given permission to the App Store or Apple News apps, App Store search queries, and the type of news story you read.

In addition, Apple uses information "such as" the following specific features to assign you to an audience segment at least 5000 people in size:

- name, address, age, gender if you've disclosed it, and devices registered to your Apple ID account. If you didn't disclose your gender, "information such as your first name in your Apple ID registration page or salutation in your Apple ID account may be used to derive your gender."

- Music, movies, books, TV shows, and apps you download, as well as any in-app purchases and subscriptions. They don't allow targeting based on downloads of a specific app or purchases within a specific app (including subscriptions) from the App Store, unless the targeting is done by that app's developer, so that's nice, I guess.

- publications you follow, subscribe to, or enable notifications from

- How you actually interact with Apple ads (unclear if "interact" here is limited to view and click, or if they attribute downstream actions to their ads)

Notably, "No Apple Pay transactions or Health app data is accessible to Apple's advertising platform, or is used for advertising purposes."

---

Granted, Apple doesn't use third-party data for "targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes," and they do not share your user or device data with "data brokers." I imagine not all users would agree that their ad personalization activity doesn't count as "tracking" in the practical sense.

[Spivak]

So is there actually a distinction here? I think most people would be surprised if Google said they didn't track you but that "ads were personalized based on your searches" but I'm open to a good-faith interpretation where tracking is actually a more specific behavior.

[mistersquid]

> So is there actually a distinction here?

Yes.

Quoting GP (emphases added):

> Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, and does not share user or device data with data brokers.

[jkubicek]

I think about it this way: Apple collects data about me in the Apple Stocks app so that it can serve relevant ads in the Apple News app.

This is fine and expected, I’m using an Apple app, I expect it to use my behavior to influence other Apple apps.

Candy Crush is blabbing all about my behavior to Facebook, which then uses that data to inform my ads on different and wholly unrelated applications.

This is creepy and intrusive.

Another way to put it, if I don’t want Apple to know anything about me it’s clear what I need to do: don’t use Apple devices, services or websites.

If I don’t want Facebook to know anything about me, it’s not at all clear what products or services I need to avoid. I need to setup a pihole or something similar, and even then I’m not confident I’m blocking enough stuff, or not otherwise leaking my identity.

[quitit]

The real world example is: when you’re in a retail store, that store can see which products you’re looking at and approach you accordingly. That’s not “tracking”, nor is presenting ads that are based on contextual information: such as how DuckDuckGo presents ads based on the search terms.

Tracking is so much more than people seem realise. From a simple facebook like/share button existing on a website or Google analytics script operating invisibly in the background, the user is followed around the web to identify their interests - that data is also combined with offline sources. Facebook/Google apps and services each also provide a wealth of complementary data. Advertisers then can bid directly on very specific groups of people, with that ad campaign being able to be metricised through to the individual sale.

Furthermore the privacy policies for Facebook and Google were both rewritten under the guise of simplicity - stating a laundry list services and metrics. This disguises which apps are gathering which metrics. The new privacy labelling requirements under the apple’s app store provide some surprising insights. (Like how gmail gathers your purchase history and collects this as part of your profile.)

You’ll see apologists on here downplay the seriousness of this, or try to build a false equivalence to regular marketing activities.

However take a moment to recognise that companies like Google privately hold more information on you than you’d be comfortable with even your elected officials having access to - all without a hint of regulation to your personal privacy.

[GekkePrutser]

Yeah this is definitely "tracking me" in my book ..