YOUR iPhone has a pop-up that has cost social media giants such as Facebook $10billion this year.
Introduced in April, the message appears when you open a new iOS app and asks if you would like to allow or block the app from tracking your activity.
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It bars apps from tracking users if they opt out. Facebook has blasted the move, claiming that it hurts small businesses.
It’s part of a change to Apple’s privacy policy that seeks to block app developers from hoovering up your data in order to target you with ads.
According to the Financial Times, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all took a hit following Apple’s changes to its privacy practices.
The newspaper reported this week that the firms had lost $9.85billion in revenue after the introduction of the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy.
That’s because they rely on app-tracking in order to target the ads that make them cash. Losing it has put a big dent in their coffers.
According to the FT, Facebook lost the most money “in absolute terms” when compared to other social platforms due to its enormous size.
Snap “fared the worst as a percentage of its business” because its advertising is largely tied to smartphones, with few users accessing its desktop platform.
“Some of the platforms that were most impacted — but especially Facebook — have to rebuild their machinery from scratch as a result of ATT,” adtech consultant Eric Seufert told FT.
“My belief is that it takes at least one year to build new infrastructure. New tools and frameworks need to be developed from scratch and tested extensively before being deployed to a high number of users.”
How to turn off ad-tracking
The new system is very simple.
When you load up an app for the first time after the update, you’ll see a pop-up.
This notification will appear if the app you’re using wants to track your activity across other apps and websites.
In the pop-up, the app-maker has a chance to explain why it wants to track you.
And then you can either allow the tracking, or ask the app not to virtually follow you around.
If you change your mind later on, you can edit your choice.
Simply go into your iPhone settings and find the app you’re looking to tweak, and then change your choice.
If the pop-up doesn’t appear, it means that app hasn’t tried to assign you a tracking ID since the iOS 14.5 update.
You can also block all apps from asking entirely.
Just go to Settings > Privacy > Tracking and toggle Allow Apps to Request to Track to the off position.
This means no app can ask for your permission, blocking them from
Of course, rogue apps could still find ways to track you even without your permission.
Never hand your iPhone to someone without doing the ‘triple tap’ trick first
In other news, Facebook has announced that it’s changing its name to “Meta”.
The company is working to create lifelike avatars of its users that they can control in a virtual world called the “metaverse”.
Apple’s system that exposes creepy iPhone apps that track your location or snoop on your browsing history has finally arrived.
And, astronomers claim to have spotted the first known planet outside of the Milky Way.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
