The privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo has called the rival Google for ‘spying’ of users after the search giant updated its flagship app to outline the exact types of information it collects for personalization and marketing purposes.
“After months of downtime, Google has finally revealed how much personal data they collect in Chrome and the Google app. No wonder they wanted to hide it,” the company said. said in a tweet. “Spying on users has nothing to do with building an excellent web browser or search engine.”
The “nutrition labels for privacy” are part of a new policy that went into effect on December 8, 2020, forcing app developers to disclose their data collection practices and help users understand how their personal information is used.
DuckDuckGo’s insinuation comes as Google has been gradually adding app privacy labels to its iOS apps over the past few weeks, according to Apple’s App Store rules, but not before a three-month delay that caused most of its apps. to go without being updated gives credence to theories that the company stopped updating the iOS app due to Apple’s application.
An analysis of app data collection practices by cloud storage company pCloud, released earlier this month, found that 52% of apps share user data with third parties, while 80% of apps use the data collected to market ‘own products in the app’ and deliver ads on other platforms.
In turn, Apple updated its privacy website last week with a new ‘Labels’ section that highlights the privacy labels for all of Apple’s apps in one place, making it easier for users to learn how Apple apps handle their personal data.
Explains transparency of app tracking
In addition, an upcoming privacy update for iOS 14.5 will also require apps to ask users’ permission before locating it on other apps and websites using the device’s ad identifier (also called IDFA) as part of a new framework called App Tracking Transparency (ATT)).
The IDFA (or Advertiser Identifier) - created by Apple in 2012 – is traditionally used by companies and marketers to track people between different applications to deliver customized ads and monitor how their advertising campaigns perform.
Imagine scrolling through your Instagram feed, and you see an ad for a smartphone. You do not tap on the ad, but rather on Google, search for the same smartphone you saw on Instagram and buy it.
After this purchase is made, the retailer picks up the IDFA from the user who purchased the phone and shares it with Facebook, who can then determine if the ID matches the user who saw an ad for the smartphone.
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With the new changes, it is no longer possible for apps and third-party affiliates to accurately measure the effectiveness of their ads without asking explicit permission from users to sign up to be tracked using the identifier if they are from one app does not jump to the other, a move that helps Facebook and others who sell mobile ads that rely heavily on this identifier to target ads.
In other words, although companies can still track users through their own services on a first-party basis, they cannot share the information with third parties without the consent of users.
What may be a sign of the future, an analysis by mobile advertising firm AppsFlyer found that after several third-party developers integrated Apple’s ATT into their applications, 99% of users chose not to watch.
“Technology does not need large amounts of personal data put together across dozens of websites and apps to succeed. Advertising has existed and flourished for decades without it,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook, the change in a speech on January 28 at the Computers explained. , Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) Conference. “If a business is built on deceptive users, on data mining, on choices that are not choices at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.”
The development comes when technology giants, including Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook, underwent a tightening of regulatory and privacy scrutiny in the US and Europe because they have a large market power and for their collection of personal information, which led to the formation of new data protection. laws aimed at protecting the privacy of users.
The French competition regulator on Wednesday rejected calls from advertising companies and publishers to block ATT on antitrust grounds, stating that the privacy initiative “does not appear to reflect an abuse of a dominant position by Apple”, but added that it would continue to investigate the changes to ensure that “Apple has not applied less restrictive rules” for its own applications, indicating how measures designed to protect users’ privacy may be in conflict with the regulation of online competition.
It is noteworthy that Google plans to stop supporting third-party cookies in its Chrome browser in early 2022, while emphasizing that it would not build alternative identifiers or tools to track users on the Internet.
Advertisers test new tool to bypass ATT
But that hasn’t stopped advertisers from trying solutions to circumvent iOS privacy protection, putting them back on a collision course with Apple.
According to the Financial Times, the Chinese Advertising Association (CAA) has developed an identifier called China Anonymization ID (or CAID), which aims to circumvent the new Apple privacy rules and enable companies to track users without logging on. To trust IDFA.
“CAID has the characteristics of anonymity and decentralization, does not collect private data, only sends out the encrypted result, and the encrypted result is irreversible, which can effectively protect the privacy and data security of the end user; the decentralized design allows developers to flexible access to meet the needs of the business, ”explained an ad-tech firm in Guangzhou called TrackingIO, in a now-removed letter.
“Because CAID is not dependent on Apple IDFA and can generate device identification ID independently of IDFA, it can be used as an alternative to device identification in iOS 14 and as an additional solution if IDFA is not available,” he said. added it.
While CAID has yet to be formally implemented, the tool is currently being tested by some of China’s largest technology companies, including ByteDance and Tencent, with “several foreign advertising companies have already applied on behalf of their Chinese divisions”, according to the report.
It remains to be seen whether Apple will alleviate this CAA proposal, which is allegedly “currently actively communicating” with the Cupertino company, with the report claiming that “Apple is aware of the tool and apparently has so far turned heads for its use. ‘
“The terms and conditions of the App Store apply to all developers around the world, including Apple,” the iPhone maker told FT. “We believe users should ask permission before being detected. Programs that disregard the user’s choice will be rejected.”