The tech firm’s new mobile operating system can stop apps tracking you, but is it as big a deal as everyone, especially Facebook, thinks?
I’ve just downloaded v14.5, the newest version of iOS, the operating system that runs my iPhone. Among the new features it boasts are: the option to unlock the phone with an Apple Watch while wearing a mask; support for something called the AirTag; separate skintone variations for emojis of couples; and more diverse voice options for Apple’s voice assistant, Siri. None of these “features” is of much use to me. But version 14.5 does add something that deeply interests me – the ability to control which apps are allowed to track my activity across other companies’ apps and websites.
Apple calls this “app-tracking transparency” (ATT) and it concerns a code known as “the identity for advertisers” or IDFA. It turns out that every iPhone comes with one of these identifiers, the object of which is to provide hucksters with aggregate data about the user’s interests. Ponder that for a moment and then reflect on the irony of a company that since 2013 has been selling such tagged devices, while at the same time bragging about its commitment to users’ privacy. Apple’s defence, of course, is that savvy users could have disabled the IDFA via the phone’s settings and privacy menus, a response that connoisseurs of evasiveness will recognise as the Jesuitical ploy used by tech companies that know most customers would rather eat raw seaweed than tamper with the factory defaults on their devices.
