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Comment by gingerlime | Hacker News Reader

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gingerlime·

It can be turned off (although I think under the hood they just send zeros).

But it’s on by default.

https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/does-apple-care-about-your-...

EDIT also https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202074

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I looked at your link and I did not see how it could be turned off. It doesn't really say what Limit Ad Tracking does. You'd think that if it caused your advertising ID to be zeroes, then Reset Advertising Identifier would be greyed out if you turned on Limit Ad Tracking.

OK, so your new link @ Apple is more clear, and I do vaguely recall seeing this years ago: for all modern iOS versions, Limit Ad Tracking does set the Ad ID to all zeroes.

I think they are deliberately making things confusing. Also the double negative thing which is not very typical for other settings.

I added a link to an Apple support doc which to me suggests that limit = off (or it’s an even bigger conspiracy than I thought, but I’m not that paranoid)

Here is how it works in more detail: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223

> When Limit Ad Tracking is enabled on iOS 10 or later, the Advertising Identifier is replaced with a non-unique value of all zeros to prevent the serving of targeted ads. It is automatically reset to a new random identifier if you disable Limit Ad Tracking.

I don't interpret "Limit Ad Tracking" as "off".

As another comment mentioned, the only effective mechanism is to reset the identifier periodically. That's not a disable mechanism, though.

Shouldn't that be enough?

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