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App developers are secretly exploring new forms of user tracking to evade Apple’s new privacy rules, which threaten the mobile advertising industry in the coming months.
Early in 2021, an iPhone update will prevent apps from using ad identifiers known as IDFA without obtaining each user’s explicit permission for targeting. Developers expect more than two-thirds of users to block tracking when they see a pop-up in their apps.
Some application manufacturers believe that they intend to use intrusive detection techniques such as “fingerprinting devices” to circumvent the new restrictions, although there is a risk of throwing them out of the App Store if caught.
“100 percent, everyone will try to make fingerprints, whether Apple applies their rules or not,” said one mobile game developer.
Privacy campaigns have welcomed Apple’s changes, but warn that it’s never possible to eliminate tracking completely.
“There will be more monitoring,” said Andrés Arrieta, director of consumer privacy engineering at Electronic Frontier Foundation, a campaigner for digital rights. ‘We’ll still see programs trying to do bad things. No matter what you do, you will have those bad actors. ”
Facebook has criticized Apple’s change, taking out a series of newspaper ads in December accusing Apple of depriving app makers of half of their advertising revenue by removing personalization.
Few other developers are willing to wage a public battle with Apple, whose App Store serves as a gatekeeper for a $ 500 billion economy. But privately, the creators of some of the App Store’s most popular apps are bad, as it’s important to advertise as a means of revenue and distribution.
“The impact is almost impossible to predict,” said the head of one major mobile game developer.
“It’s a big, big change,” said the head of another leading mobile game developer. ‘This is the biggest risk we have [as a company]… It can really negatively affect us. ‘
Developers are concerned that many in the advertising industry are not yet aware of the extent of the upcoming changes. “Brands and agencies have no idea – they do not know where the ecosystem is headed,” said a policy manager at one app maker. “Technical intermediaries are forced to solve the problem.”
Under such pressure, some developers are desperately considering using new and more intrusive forms of detection, even though users are denying their apps permission to use IDFA.
Device fingerprints can be used to recognize recurring visits from the same smartphone, even in different applications. The technique, which is prohibited by Apple’s App Store rules but difficult to detect, works by combining the hardware and software features of a device, configurations such as Internet connections, battery or language settings, and usage patterns.
Another way to track people between apps is if they use the same email address to sign up for different services and games. With ‘Hashed Email’, which changes addresses into a string of letters and numbers, companies can share user details without giving an individual’s email address directly to their partners.
While these techniques can be difficult to detect for Apple, the cost of getting caught – and losing access to the world’s most profitable mobile shopping window – can be enormous. “Do you want to play with fire?” asked a developer.
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