Apple’s Privacy Problem
politico.eu
politico.eu
What targeted ads on native apps? iWork? Messages? Mail? Photos? Safari? I don’t see any ads anywhere.
I do see content suggestions in Music and TV. Even if these are first party agreements between Apple and an artist or publisher, I’d consider that different than third party ad ecosystems, much like NYT selling content-associated ads on its own pages is not same as a retargeted AdWords block.
Maps has a locality aware “Editorial Picks” when you click in the Search box. Some of this feels like ads, as do embedded Yelp contexts and the like. However, I’ve never had the sense the Yelp content was personalized instead of just localized.
App Store certainly appears to try to sell me things, though this doesn’t come as a surprise with the word “Store” in the name so I’m not even mad. Especially since it doesn’t try to sell them to me in iWork, Messages, Mail, Photos, or Safari (where app discovery banners are by the app dev, not Apple). Feels like suggesting future first party purchases based on your prior first party purchases is to a degree expected from a first party store, somehow different from advertising.
There are straight up ads intermingled in article content in the News (magazine reading) app. They appear to be content owner ads versus Apple ads, look to me like “run of site” type ads placed by the content brand since I see the same advertiser when visiting the web domain. A prominent newspaper’s articles are often showing a single car maker’s banners across every article, for example. The ads appear associated with the content versus with me as an individual user, but they certainly could be retargeted, and are the only place I can think of I’m seeing what I’d consider straight up ads in an Apple app. Not sure that counts though since it’s a reader app, any more than seeing AdWords in Safari.
It stopped when I used their email unsubscribe link, IIRC.
In any case, this is also not retargeting or third party data mining, profiling, and personalization, it’s an entitlement with the new purchase.
Apple obviously does collect a lot of information on users that are necessary to provide various services. The concern is if this information is used for purposes other than providing those services.
https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-complaints-against-apples-trac...
Basically, it's specifically contesting that Apple doesn't comply with the EU's "cookie law" directive in its implementation of IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) in iOS.
The article and accusations are very vague. I thought Apple collect data to customise ads only within apps (so app store data is used for ads in app store, news app data is used only in news app etc.). I'm not sure if they are claiming that something else is being done or that the user isn't being asked if that is OK.
https://sneak.berlin/20200604/if-zoom-is-wrong-so-is-apple/
https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware...
https://sneak.berlin/20210202/macos-11.2-network-privacy/
Two comments from the same author on M1 Macs.
TL;dr - don't believe every random crank you see on the Internet :p