Apple’s New Ad Conversion Tracking Will Benefit User Privacy | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s New Ad Conversion Tracking Will Benefit User Privacy

robmaceachern.com

130 pointsrobmaceachern66 comments

>I can’t see Google and Facebook being thrilled about implementing support for this, but given the recent scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, Apple should have extra leverage to push them in this direction.

If Apple makes it an App Store policy, what choice do they have?

PR wars I imagine. "We can't do requested feature X because Apple blocks Y".

I think Apple would care about the trials and tribulations of the ad-tech industry about as much they did when they added Intelligent Tracking Prevention to Safari (or blocked third-party cookies by default).

To which Apple would basically go "...yeah, because we respect users privacy" and shrug.

Google would look pretty bad if it continued to complain at that point.

Google and Facebook both interact with Apple in a lot of ways. If Apple makes it an App Store policy they will have options in how to attack back.

I think the poster 'IBM' was implying that in the current climate, Google and Facebook have to be a lot more careful in the "weapons of war" they use than Apple does. Not that Apple would be this evil, but in the current climate, Apple might even invite opportunity to provoke a response by Google or Facebook.

It's also App Store policy to not lock built-in iOS features behind in-app purchases or subscriptions, yet Google gets away with it on the YouTube.app by only allowing background audio if you subscribe to YouTube Red.

Youtube in background is a built in ios feature?

Apple willingly permits any application to subvert user control. You can't record your iPhone screen trough the lightning connection while using Netflix app. You can't send a fake GPS signal to apps, give fake contact files, or lie to your software. And you can't play background audio, because fundamentally Apple doesn't put user freedom first. I find it bizarre that an application on my phone could choose to not play my audio in the background.

If you can't lie to your software, then it controls you, and you have no power. Apple could do more in this aspect for control.

This new SDK doesn't help advertisers or users. Being able to assess the quality of users coming from different ad networks is crucial for any advertiser to assess the quality of their spend. Some ad networks might generate high quality legitimate users, while others are fraught with click fraud, or low quality users. Since an advertiser isn't able to tell which users came from an ad, no advertiser will adopt it.

If Apple really wanted to protect user privacy, they would provide something similar to the iAd Framework they provide for their own Apple App Store Ads, where the app can ping the iAd Framework to tell if the user installed the app from an Apple App Store ad and monitor the users long term engagement, while Apple handles all the attribution on their end. If Apple took the same approach they use for their own App Store Ads it would be a big step forward in helping protect user privacy and eliminate the need for all the fingerprinting, etc that some ad networks do.

The fact they didn't, I feel this is nothing more than a fluff PR move by Apple and does not seem genuine.

I see why advertisers wouldn't like it, but how the heck isn't it good for users? You don't even have an explicit argument for that point, just the implicit "it might not be adopted." You're a bit disingenuous with your claim.

As for your proposed system, it could work, but the advertiser might be able to deduce a bit as they track them through engagement. A black box seems like the best system for users, and if Apple can force that on to developers more power to them.

Look at the OP's profile. Manager at Pinterest. Theres no doubt the attack is disgenuous because said individual have skin in the game.

I usually don't mind if they disclose it upfront. But to hide it and present an argument as neutral is dishonest.

What attack? The Adtech Ecosystem is incestuous, corrupt and penultimately complicated. jwegan is technically correct and savvy enough to understand one of many problems with this kind of fluff announcement. The least of these problems is a strawman reaction that anyone who dismissed it, is a bad actor. New SDKs are born every day. Apple CANNOT PRESENT a new technology that isn't a variant of what already survives in the ecosystem (i.e. insufficient other than to add another paid product that doesn't work any better). If Apple wants to go outside the IAB standards, it's another attempt to "take over" or can only be used as an Apple "internal" tool.

Here's a disclaimer: I worked at multiple Adtech companies in senior engineering positions.

Still not seeing any reason as to why it’s bad for users.

Adding another lie to the stack has the same consequences as before. More bloat in the sites and higher costs across the board.

Please be less ad hominem and speak to the merits of the conversation. Does it matter if the OP has skin in the game if the merits of the argument have real value?

I'm not trying to hide it. Like you said it is right in my HN profile.

I don't work on Pinterest's ads business and I'm not very familiar with that side of the company. I'm speaking as someone who runs ads on other sites to try and drive traffic to Pinterest.

Also, like the other poster said, an ad-hominem attack is a classic logic fallacy. You are criticizing who is saying it and did not bring up a single critique of my actual argument.

From a pure app startup performance and binary size standpoint, it would nice to stop using Tune.

>The new APIs are part of the StoreKit framework and include a new class called SKAdNetwork.

>With the new set of APIs, Apple will become the intermediary between the app and advertising network for conversion tracking, eliminating the need for apps to install third-party ad SDKs which potentially expose sensitive user data.

Am I missing something or is this not really any different than the 3rd party ad SDK problem the author portends? Whether the app uses a 3rd party sdk from Google/FB or built-in lib functionality via the class SKAdNetwork - it doesn't seem any different.

You can’t track users from advertising click through opening the app after downloading the app from the App Store. So networks have to do all kinds of tricks like try to fingerprint the user to associate the advertising click and the app open.

This should make it much cleaner.

Plus after this has been around for a while Apple can add a policy banning other ad networks from using other means to track users.

Apple can just change Safari so it doesn't automatically open the App Store on redirects or from javascript. That way you'd have to direct the user to a tracking page and then he'd have to click another link to open the App Store. I doubt their tracking would be worth enough to put up hoops like that for the user to jump through.

The way I understand this: doing this in your application requires you to have network access, which means you have to convince your user to give it to you.

This gives you a way to count installs (and almost nothing else; you probably can assume arrival times correlate with time of installation and learn something about your global user base from that, but that’s all I can think of) without getting any permission from the user.

Applications can still use the old approach, but that’s more work and won’t produce accurate install counts. Apple thinks the end result will be that fewer apps will do it, making the dialog asking for network access rarer, and users more wary of giving the permission.

Apps on iOS don’t need to ask for network access.

Its proponents will tell you this doesn't have any tracking in it. Fully anonymous. Only the advert's ID gets passed along to track conversion.

Who knows who could have clicked this advert, with the ID "Advert-presented-to-ugh123"? Could have been anyone. We've successfully masked out any tracking, hooray for Apple.

Also I don't know enough about in-app and app-to-app advertising, but I'm surprised if the mechanisms described are sufficient to keep everybody honest.

My thoughts exactly! So, I programmatically name my campaigns per person, and I’ve still got perfect tracking.

the difference is: with facebook sdk, facebook has all the user data. with google sdk, google has all the user data. with apple new sdk, apple has all the data.

besides that, with the 2 previous sdk, advertisers know if the install was from a good user vs a abandoned user/bot that installed it once and vanished. the new apple sdk conveniently will not let advertisers make that distinction.

Apples fake privacy concerns.

They allow apps like gas buddy to wholesale sell your real time location to governments by using vague language in their privacy policies (which I cannot even find a link to on their homepage).

> They allow apps like gas buddy to wholesale sell your real time location…

You control this. I don't recall whether this app supports "Never" as a Privacy > Location Services choice, but you can choose "While Using" instead of "Always".

You _really_ control this. If you don't like Gas Buddy's privacy policy just don't install it.

My thoughts exactly. When I don't like something an app is doing I don't install it. I remember when I'd try free games on Android that requested every permission under the sun I would not install those apps. I've even seen some apps share in the description "Removed the crazy permissions due to complaints, sorry guys did not mean to upset you" or something along those lines. So sometimes it's not malicious, but it is scary that an offline only game needs so much access to your phone.

The developer doesn't get to choose not to support 'Never' and with iOS 11 doesn't get to choose not to support 'While using' either. It maybe though that the app can't work without knowing your location, which sounds likely for an app that is supposed to tell you something related to your location.

"Never" is always an option from my experience. I have never seen an app that doesn't allow to completely deny location access.

> I have never seen an app that doesn't allow to completely deny location access.

That's because Apple explicitly tests for that during app review, and will reject apps which crash or refuse to work if they're denied access to Location Services or other APIs (photos, contacts, microphone, etc).

So this is a non-issue. But technically, even if an app slips through the cracks and only allows "Always" and "While using the app" as options, you can force-quit the app without pressing either of the buttons on the modal and then deleting the app, thus not giving it any location information.

> ...even if an app slips through the cracks and only allows "Always" and "While using the app" as options...

It can't. The permissions UI is rendered by the OS, not by the application. There's no way to hide the option to deny permissions.

Based on your previous reply I thought that the lack of apps that require location was due to Apple’s review process and not the fact that the “Never” button can’t be disabled.

It's both. If your app doesn't work properly when a user taps the "Never" button (which you can't get rid of), Apple rejects it.

This is a new feature in iOS 11.

You have control over your data: you can choose whether GasBuddy has access to your location always, never, or only during use.

This is one case where iOS widgets can impact your privacy: setting it to 'only during use' also qualifies the widget to refresh your location when it displays. It's not obvious to me whether any access of the widget screen is sufficient or whether you have to scroll past/to the GasBuddy widget to explicitly trigger that.

Anyway, Apple has been a loud advocate for privacy, and its CEO has strong personal reasons for valuing it.

>its CEO has strong personal reasons for valuing [privacy]

I don't know what this is referring to, could you please share?

He's gay.

A gay man raised in Alabama.

See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/08/15...

Do you want less or more user control? Or should Apple control everything? I'm certainly not a fan of Apple but I respect their ability to mostly just stick the to basics of you give me $100 and I give you this product of equal (sic) value.

> Apples fake privacy concerns.

Apple has been a loud, proven advocate and supporter of Privacy. This comment is all snark and nothing factual.

They have been loud, but it remains to be proven. The truth is that we don't really know what they do with our data.

Telling the FBI to bugger off when they came and asked apple to crack their own encryption isn't enough of an example, exigent as it may very well be, whatever your personal opinions of due process are?

I'm extremely glad they did that, and I absolutely give them credit for it. But it only proves that they were willing to stand up to the FBI. It doesn't prove anything else about how they handle your data and privacy. I'm not saying that they abuse it, I'm just saying that we don't know what they do.

All we can do is look at the information so far and it indicates they care about privacy: https://www.apple.com/privacy/ and more specifically https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-request...

Well, that isn't nearly all of the information. That is what they say, just like FB says they they don't abuse your privacy.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...

They have already shown that they are willing to violate people's privacy. That is useful information.

So if you're not going to take it straight from the horses mouth, what then is your complaint and how can anyone ever hope to resolve it?

This isn't personal, I just find it increasingly odd when people in online discussions gripe about company not doing x, is then shown clear examples of x and coping back with "that's what they want you to believe" or when asking for an example, is given one and backpedal saying "that doesn't meet these new criteria that weren't up for discussion from the start"

It boggles my mind.

If you won't offer concessions when evidence comes straight from the source what evidence will you?

And I find it insanely naive that anyone would believe what comes from the horses mouth, especially when they don't provide any evidence. Companies say things all the time that aren't true, and I find it silly to believe giant PR groups.

I'm not saying that they violate your privacy, I'm only saying that we don't know what they do with your data, thus we don't know if they protect your privacy or not.

My complaint is easily solvable: Allow me to set up and use a phone/laptop in such a way that they can't violate my privacy.

No? Facebook and Google also refuse to crack their own encryption, but are still privacy concerns.

Is there ANY evidence that they don’t do what their privacy policy says they do?

Yeah, there is: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...

That is proof that Apple follows local laws. Just like every other American company doing business in China.

For instance, Microsoft.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/china/china-overview-...

And?

A privacy violation via legal means is still a privacy violation. I fully acknowledge that we don't know what Microsoft does with our data either.

Their specific question was if you had evidence of apple violating their own privacy policy. I'd agree that what they're doing is unethical, but it's not done secretly, and I'd expect that in China their privacy policy makes this clear.

Do you have evidence of Apple violating their privacy policy?

Actually, you are correct, I apologize. I mis-read the question and no, I don't have any evidence of Apple violating their privacy policy. But that's not what I'm stating. I'm only stating that we don't know what they do with our data.

from downvotes on this, gotta love the fanboys take on those issues.

> > app steals user data

> jusy deny gps access or never install it

and then

> > apple throws chinese reporters under the bus

> they are just complying with local law.

like they didn't have an option of not doing business there.

Technically speaking, they have the option. Practically speaking, they do not have an option.

I don't see why not. Plenty of other organizations work that way. Why can't Apple?

Apple’s a publicly-held company, and China is among the largest markets for consumer electronics. Apple’s shareholders wouldn’t be too pleased if Apple simply said “nah” to such a market, and Apple’s obligations are ultimately to its shareholders.

The situation might be different if Apple was a different kind of company, but it is what it is.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. Prioritizing your users is completely an option. This is simply a choice in which Apple chooses money over it's users.

Since I can't edit my last reply, and I misread this originally: No, I don't have any evidence that they do. Nor am I saying that they violate their privacy policy. I'm simply saying that we don't know what they do with their user's data.

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