Apple warns Chinese developers not to try to bypass iOS 14 anti-tracking features

Apple has strengthened consumer privacy protection in iOS 14, including strengthening the tracking protection of advertising networks, which is beneficial to consumers but harmful to advertising networks.

This is also true of advertising giants such as Facebook strongly protesting Apple’s new policy, but Apple still believes that protecting consumer privacy is the most important thing.

At present, Chinese technology companies have also begun to jointly prepare to formulate new tracking methods to bypass Apple’s restrictions and continue to track and collect user information.

Obviously, this attempt to bypass Apple’s protection mechanism violates Apple’s relevant policies, so Apple has clearly told Chinese developers not to try to bypass it.

In an email to a Chinese developer, Apple stated that it found related applications to collect user and device information and create a unique identifier for the device for tracking and identification.

The company requires relevant developers to make improvements immediately to comply with Apple’s regulations. If they do not make improvements and continue to violate developer policies, they may be taken off the shelf.

“The App Store” by Glen Bledsoe is licensed under CC BY 2.0

This shows that Apple has the ability to perform automated scanning to detect whether the application is trying to bypass Apple’s restrictions. If the restrictions are bypassed, it may adversely affect users.

For apps that violate Apple’s privacy policy, the company will of course take it down on the grounds of violating the developer’s agreement, and the new deal will be meaningless if it is not handled.

According to media reports, at least two Chinese developers have received emails from Apple. Both of these developers are trying to circumvent Apple’s privacy protections.

There have been media reports that Chinese advertising giants are trying to circumvent Apple’s privacy protection, and these giants are also preparing to join forces to create Internet advertising identifiers.

Through this private advertising identifier, you can continue to identify specific users and perform persistent tracking, and then deliver targeted advertisements based on user interests.

Companies participating in the drafting of this new identifier rule include Tencent, Gridsum, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Baidu, Huawei, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, and Shanghai Data Exchange Center.

With the help of this advertising identifier, the accuracy of advertising delivery and the authenticity of traffic can be screened.

However, Apple’s new policy is actually just to give users the right to choose. In the past, the device turned on the advertising identifier by default and allowed the app to perform persistent tracking.

In iOS 14, Apple adjusted it to turn off the advertising identifier by default. If the app wants to track, it must first ask the user for permission before turning on track.

However, for the advertising industry, it seems that this way of giving users choice will have an adverse effect, so the advertising industry strongly opposes Apple’s approach, but it seems useless.

Via: iphonehacks