You Ask Your Apps Not to Track You, But Sometimes Apple Lets Them Do It Anyway
Last year Apple rolled out a privacy setting called App Tracking Transparency, or ATT. You’ve seen it if you use an iPhone when apps ask for permission to track you.
ATT is a big deal. It had such a huge impact on the tech industry that it may have tilted TikTok’s war on Facebook in the Chinese app’s favor. But the setting itself only controls one specific piece of data. When you turn it on, your apps can’t collect an ID number called the IDFA, or Identifier for Advertisers. Apps aren’t supposed to sneak around and track you in other ways, but there’s little stopping them from a technical perspective. Apple says if it catches developers breaking that policy, their apps can be banned from the App Store.
But research has shown that Apple seems to be letting a lot of apps get away with tracking you anyway. Last year, a study found that turning on the setting made “no meaningful difference in third-party tracking activity.” Even after the study was published, Apple seemed slow to act.
The iPhone maker isn’t going to let big players like TikTok or Meta blatantly flaunt the rules, but so far the company’s enforcement efforts against smaller players seems lackluster. In other words, your iPhone may not be as private as Apple suggests.
