Those who want to help convince Apple to further improve the privacy of iOS users can sign Mozilla’s petition here.
Mozilla launches a petition and hopes Apple will reset the user’s advertising identifier every month
Recently, the official Mozilla blog posted a petition asking Apple to reset the IDFA (Apple Identifier for Advertisers) for IOS users every month. The purpose of this request is to prevent online advertisers from creating profiles that contain too much information about iOS users.
IDFA is “Apple Identifier for Advertisers” and is the unique ID of each device. An app running on the device can request access to this ID and forward the ID to the advertiser. As explained by an expert in a mobile marketing company: “IDFA replaces cookies in mobile advertising.”
One concept that corresponds to IDFA is UDID (unique device identifiers), which is permanent and unchangeable. In the past, many applications collected these UDIDs for a variety of improper reasons, enabling widespread tracking of iOS users. Today, for sensitivity, application access to UDIDs is blocked. But Apple added support for IDFA, making it a replacement for UDID. As a result, application manufacturers targeting advertising interests are encouraged to use IDFA to track users.
In fact, Apple allows users to turn off this feature. These identifiers can already be manually reset under Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services on iOS devices and under Settings > General > Privacy on Apple TV. The bad news is that most users don’t even know about the existence of this feature, let alone know how to turn it off.
As a result, the Mozilla Foundation publicly advocated user in an attempt to persuade Apple to make further privacy changes to the IDFA system. Mozilla wants Apple to automatically change IDFA for all users every month because it protects the privacy of iOS users who don’t know they can disable or change IDFA at any time.
