Apple is feeling pressure to reaffirm its privacy stance due to two recent news stories: its cooperation with subpoenas from the Trump administration that saw phone data handed over, and a case in which iPhone repair techs stole compromising photos.
CNIL has hit Apple's App Store with a fine of €8 million over its ad personalization practices, taking it to task for not properly collecting consent and making the process of opting out too indirect.
New human rights policy that Apple has recently adopted attempts to address longstanding criticisms of the conditions under which its devices are manufactured and how it deals with government repression.
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.
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.”
Apple boasts of stopping some $1.5 billion in attempted app fraud in 2020 and removing one million malicious apps, but complaints of app-based scams are still quite common.
