In opposition to the proposed UK Online Safety Bill, Apple has issued a statement referring to encrypted messaging as being critical to privacy and online safety.
Apple's privacy rules will still block developers from the convenience of using each device's unique identifying number without permission, but it appears a number of anonymized device-level "signals" will now be fair game for ad tracking purposes.
New iOS 14 operating system will not only allow Apple users to selectively disable ad tracking in apps but also introduce a suite of new enhanced privacy features.
Apple attributes iPhone security to its "walled garden" approach. Among other claims, Apple says that an Android device is up to 47 times more likely to contract malware and that allowing app sideloading would attract a wave of cyber crime to the iOS platform.
Apple's mandatory privacy consent requirements are expected to roll out sometime in early 2021 and apps that do not comply with user tracking is expected to be removed from the app store.
A zero-day vulnerability that has been with iOS since the first iPhone launched has been identified and patched out by Apple, but with the warning that there is evidence it has been exploited in attack chains for quite some time.
As third-quarter reports roll out, the full effect of the Apple privacy changes to iOS are beginning to be measurable. The early report is that the ad revenue impact is very different for different companies.
The IDFA was created as something of a compromise to make ad tracking possible while protecting user privacy, but designer Erik Neuenschwander eventually came to openly regret having ever created the system.
Most of the digital advertising industry complained about Apple's iOS 14 privacy updates for nearly a year. Amazon seems to be an early destination for those that are redirecting ad spend from Apple and Facebook.
New report from Apple serves as an invective against the practice of sideloading apps to get around the App Store rules. Apple characterizes any sideloaded app as a "serious security risk.”
