Abstract: Android has come a long way in enhancing its security features and building out privacy controls for users, including with its Android 12 innovations. But as Apple continues to crack down on ad-tracking in an iOS 14 feature, the bar is higher than ever—and in ways that increasingly complicate Google’s balance between the privacy its users deserve and the targeted advertising that drives its business.
Android 12 Lets You See What Your Apps Are Getting IntoA new privacy dashboard and “app hibernation” are coming to Google’s mobile operating system.
Google’s new privacy dashboard breaks down app activity by category— like “Location,” “Camera,” and “Microphone”—and then shows you which apps accessed those mechanisms, and for how long.Photograph: Getty Images
“With this release we want to keep narrowing down the scope of what data apps get,“ says Android group product manager Charmaine D’Silva. „It’s taken some time to get it right, but the main focus of this release is giving a deeper level of transparency to users.”Android 12 includes a “Privacy Dashboard” where you can see which apps used potentially sensitive permissions in the past 24 hours. The dashboard breaks down app activity by category— like “Location,” “Camera,” and “Microphone”—and then shows you which apps accessed those mechanisms. Google will also be asking developers to provide additional information on what they were using the access for at that particular moment. And you can adjust or revoke app permissions through the dashboard. It gives more insight than you might be used to into how apps work in the background, especially because it includes not only that an app accessed, say, location data or your microphone, but when and for how long.
“We give permissions to apps so they can do awesome things; it’s not at all unusual to see entries on the dashboard,” D’Silva says. “But is anything on the list surprising? Maybe you gave an app access awhile ago and don’t remember why exactly. We wanted to give users a complete picture.”
Android 12 also introduces a green indicator light in the top right corner of any screen that goes on if your smartphone’s microphone or camera are in use. Apple’s iOS 14 added a similar feature last year. In Android, though, you can pull down on the light to see more details about which app is using the mic or camera and why, and there’s easy access from there to revoke permission if you want to.
Google is also adding two controls in Android’s “Quick Settings” to completely turn off camera access or microphone access for all apps. Pressing one or both of the buttons is the software equivalent of putting a sticker over your webcam. It doesn’t revoke permissions to an app; it simply kills the feed from the sensor. Most importantly, the operating system itself runs the camera and microphone off switches, which means apps don’t know when they’re enabled. They just see blank feeds coming from the mic and camera if they try to access them. Otherwise, malicious apps could take note of when your camera and microphone are off, and look for other ways to track potentially sensitive activity.
When it comes to sharing permission information with apps, Android already offers the option to share location data as a one-off, rather than committing to share it anytime an app wants. D’Silva says the option to do these one-time data shares has been popular with users. Android 12 takes things a step farther by adding the ability to share only an approximate position with an app. This way you don’t need to tell a weather app where you live or work in order to get the forecast in your neighborhood. Apple’s mobile operating system debuted a similar feature last year in iOS 14. As with sharing your precise location, Android 12 provides three options for sharing your approximate device location with apps: “While using the app,” “Only this time,” or “Don’t allow.”
The Android team is continuing to roll out its “permission auto-reset” program, first announced for Android 11. The idea is to reset permissions on apps you haven’t used for an extended period of time, so they don’t hold on to access they don’t need. If you want to reinstate their permissions later, you always can. In the last few weeks alone, D’Silva says that 8.5 million app permissions have reset. Android 12 is also expanding on this idea with a new feature called “App Hibernation.” In addition to removing permissions from apps you haven’t used in a long time, this extra step will fully stop apps from running in the background, remove all the temporary and optimization files an app is storing on your device, and remove the app’s ability to send notifications. If you tap on a hibernating app, it will come back to life and reestablish its presence as you use it. But the app’s permissions aren’t automatically reinstated. Hibernation is simply a way to keep apps around on your phone without letting them lurk unchecked.To allow more apps to deploy local machine learning features like Android’s Live Caption accessibility function, Now Playing music identification tool, and Smart Reply for chat, Android 12 includes in a new feature called Private Compute Core. The idea is to establish an isolated environment, or a sandbox, in which AI systems can run without direct network access and completely separated from other operating system functions. Only a set group of application programming interfaces can interact with the Private Compute Core. While separating these systems in software doesn’t guarantee perfect security, it makes it much harder for a rogue app or malware to gain remote access to local machine learning features or the personal data powering them. And D’Silva emphasizes that Private Compute Core is fully open source, so developers can vet the setup for flaws.Android has come a long way in enhancing its security features and building out privacy controls for users, including with its Android 12 innovations. But as Apple continues to crack down on ad-tracking in an iOS 14 feature, the bar is higher than ever—and in ways that increasingly complicate Google’s balance between the privacy its users deserve and the targeted advertising that drives its business.
A Guide to Apple’s New App-Tracking Controls (ATT) in IOS 14.5
It’s the biggest lie of our time: “I have read the terms and conditions and privacy policy.”Read a bajillion words of legalese before hitting “agree” to use an app? Surrre.Yet I have one request for you when iOS 14.5 arrives on your iPhone and privacy pop-upalooza begins: Read them. Lucky for you, they’re short and crucial to understanding how your most personal info is used.
As for how you choose to answer these prompts, I have some advice on that, too.
On Monday, after many months of anticipation, Apple AAPL -0.24% released iOS 14.5. The update isn’t as big as the full-digit release that typically arrives each September, but it does have a few useful upgrades.Siri has some new, more realistic voices. If you’re setting up a new device, the virtual assistant no longer defaults to a female voice —something I’ve long advocated for. Then, there’s the new mask-unlock trick. If you’re wearing a mask and want to unlock your iPhone without punching in a passcode, you can use your Apple Watch to confirm it’s you. Oh, and there’s a redesigned syringe emoji. No sore arm included.But the most important and most controversial update? App Tracking Transparency—abbreviated to ATT. The privacy feature requires any app that wants to track your activity and share it with other apps or websites to ask for permission.“We really just want to give users a choice,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, told me in an exclusive video interview. “These devices are so intimately a part of our lives and contain so much of what we’re thinking and where we’ve been and who we’ve been with that users deserve and need control of that information.” He added, “The abuses can range from creepy to dangerous.”
Many apps on your phone will begin showing pop-ups like these.
PHOTO: JOANNA STERN/THE WALL STREET JOURNALApp developers, advertisers and social networks dependent on ad revenue don’t see it as such a humanitarian decision. For years, they’ve relied on this sort of tracking and sharing your info with data brokers to build a dossier on your digital habits to serve you highly personalized ads. Facebook has been vocal about Apple’s move, calling it “harmful to small businesses,” “anticompetitive” and “hypocritical.”“It’s people opting out without understanding the impact,” said Graham Mudd, Facebook’s vice president of Ads & Business Product Marketing. “If you look at Apple’s language and the lack of explanation, we’re concerned that people will opt out because of this discouraging prompt, and we will find ourselves in a world where the internet has more paywalls and where far fewer small businesses are able to reach their customers.”
“It wasn’t surprising to us to hear that some people were going to push back on this, but at the same time, we were completely confident that it’s the right thing,” Mr. Federighi said. While the feature’s rollout has been delayed, Mr. Federighi said that was caused not by backlash but because Apple had to make sure app developers could comply when a user opted out of tracking. Mr. Federighi said Apple worked hard on the clarity of the prompts and has created privacy-respecting ad tools for developers.After years of writing about the need for more privacy control, I’m grateful for the choice. But this is much more than just some eeny-meeny-miny-moe decision. This is a choice about who you think deserves your personal information, and how targeted you want the marketing in your feeds to be. When presented with a pop-up, here’s what to consider.
Option 1: Ask App Not to Track
This is your hands-off-my-data choice.Tapping this tells the system not to share something you probably never knew you were sharing, called an IDFA—Identifier for Advertisers. For years all iPhones have had this invisible string of numbers used for tracking and identifying you and your activity in and across apps. (Android has something similar.)Here’s an example of how it works: You download a free, ad-supported sleep app. A few hours later you start seeing ads for adult onesies in your Facebook feed. You also start seeing ads in the sleep app pertaining to other interests of yours—potentially as innocent as dish soap or as personal as fertility treatments.Behind the scenes the sleep app and Facebook were communicating about you using that identifier. And since most apps use it, the data attached to yours can include the apps you’ve downloaded, your search history, your purchase history, your recent locations and more.Tapping this option will restrict the app from accessing that tracking number (which your device no longer shares by default), but it also tells that app you don’t want to be tracked using sneakier means. That’s why it says “Ask App Not to Track” rather than “Do Not Track,” Mr. Federighi explained.Apps that might ignore the policy and continue to track through other means could be punished in the App Store, he added. “They might not be able to provide updates or their app could even be removed from the store.” Translation: Follow the rules or get out.The appeal of this option doesn’t need my explanation: Stop the tracking and the “surveillance capitalism,” as some call it, that’s been happening behind the scenes all these years.Those who prioritize privacy—or just don’t like pop-ups—can opt out of tracking altogether with a universal setting that tells all apps, “No.” On your iPhone go to Settings > Privacy > Tracking. You’ll see “Allow Apps to Request to Track.” Turn it off and apps won’t ask—and they won’t have access to your identifier.
If you want to stop tracking across all apps, and prevent future pop-ups, go to Settings and turn off ‚Allow Apps to Request to Track.‘
PHOTO: JOANNA STERN/THE WALL STREET JOURNALIf an app doesn’t have a pop-up, it doesn’t have your identifier and it shouldn’t be tracking and sharing your info with other apps. Apple’s own apps won’t have pop-ups, Mr. Federighi said. Google has also announced that many of its iOS apps will no longer use the IDFA.
Option 2: Allow Tracking
Tap this option and your data flows like the Mississippi—at least among the apps that get your consent. App makers have two opportunities to explain how they will use the data and convince you they’re worthy.When you get the pop-up, under the question “Allow [app] to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites?” you’ll see a message from the app maker in small text. Most are short and tend to explain the need to track for “relevant” or “personalized” ads. Still, read them—you may be surprised by what’s said.Others go a step further. Before you get to that official pop-up, some will show a full screen explaining the benefits of advertising and how they use personal data.Merriam-Webster sure got my attention: “The Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus with hundreds of thousands of entries are free, but we couldn’t do that without ads.” That’s one way to pull at the heartstrings of a professional writer. The McDonald’s app offering more ads for “food you love”? Not as compelling.
Before you see the official iOS prompt, apps may show a full screen encouraging you to opt into tracking.
PHOTO: JOANNA STERN/THE WALL STREET JOURNALWhen I asked business owners and execs in the ad industry and social media to explain why people should tap “Allow,” their answers boiled down to the following:
- You want relevant ads. Many tracking pleas mentioned the days when our social-media feeds were full of pointless ads. “I don’t have a baby. I don’t even like babies! Why are you trying to sell me diapers?” But remember tapping this won’t make all ads—and not even all relevant ads—go away. There are still ways to deliver targeted ads without this sort of tracking.
- You want to support small businesses. “As a consumer and mother, I get it. As a business owner, this sucks,” Erin LaCkore, a 35-year-old owner of LaCkore Couture, a small jewelry brand, told me. “There are so many more people I would be able to reach.” Facebook’s ad tools allow her and many other small businesses to carefully target people who would be interested in their products.
“When people go to make this decision, I want them to A) think of their safety but B) what you might have missed out on that you might have loved as a consumer,” she added. (My colleague Christopher Mims explored the impact on small businesses in a recent column.)
- You want the internet to remain free. Facebook argues this move threatens the ability for apps to remain free and ad-supported. Mr. Federighi said that there was a similar response years back when Apple introduced privacy features in Safari, yet ads still appear on websites viewed in Safari.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of people will likely say no to tracking. AppsFlyer is a measurement firm that helps businesses evaluate ad-campaign performance. According to the company’s data, based on the early use of ATT in iOS, the opt-in rate was an average of 26% per app across nearly 550 apps. People are more likely to allow tracking with nongaming apps and brands that they trust.Whatever you decide, you can always change your mind. In that Tracking section of your Privacy settings, you can adjust your choice for each app.“People have their own sense of privacy and how important it is to them,” Mr. Federighi said. “So we will all make our personal decisions.”His personal decision? Oh, he’ll be opting out. I plan to do the same for many apps—especially ones that handle my most personal information—but I will consider it case by case, and read each pop-up with care.
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ios-14-5-a-guide-to-apples-new-app-tracking-controls-11619457425
How This Apple IOS Feature Will Change Your iPhone Forever
Apple’s biggest mid cycle operating system update ever, iOS 14.5, is due to launch over the next few days, the iPhone maker has confirmed. The iOS 14.5 ugrade includes a barrage of cool new features, but the most outstanding by far is App Tracking Transparency (ATT)—and it will change your iPhone forever.
ATT has ruffled many feathers across the advertising industry because it effectively spells the end of the IDFA (identifier for advertisers), a unique device code that companies use to track your activity across iPhone apps and services. The iOS 14.5 privacy change hurts companies such as Facebook the most, and the social network has been protesting against ATT for months.
What exactly is ATT?
ATT is a feature that requires app makers to ask for your permission to track you across iPhone apps and services. In reality, that means after upgrading to iOS 14.5, you will see a pop-up box (see picture below), which reads: “Allow X to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites?”You can then choose “Ask App not to Track” or “Allow.”
After upgrading to iOS 14.5, you will see a pop-up box which reads: “Allow X to track your activity … [+]
APPLEIn iOS 14.5, if you ask the app not to track, it will lose access to the IDFA, the unique device code I mentioned earlier. Apple has also stipulated that app makers must not track iPhone users in other ways using data such as email addresses.
Why has Facebook kicked up such a fuss about ATT?
Facebook has been very vocal in its opposition to ATT since the feature was delayed from the initial launch of iOS 14.5 last year. The social network even took out full page newspaper ads to criticize Apple’s privacy move, saying it would hurt small businesses the most.It’s true the iOS 14.5 privacy change will impact small advertisers, but it is the likes of Facebook who will be impacted the most. Unlike Apple, whose business model is based around the hardware and services it sells, Facebook’s is based around advertising. Access to the IDFA has helped data-hungry Facebook to demonstrate the effectiveness of ad campaigns. You might see an ad on Facebook, then Google the company’s website and make a purchase. If you allow iPhone IDFA tracking, this data can be collected and used to measure the success of ad campaigns to improve personalized ads.Facebook says iOS 14.5’s ATT is being used by Apple to push its own business model for profit, at the expense of Facebook’s and others. Indeed, a recent Financial Times report detailed how the iPhone maker is due to dip its own toes back into mobile ads, via an expansion of its App Store ads business. There is also the argument that Apple is trying to force app developers to charge more for things such as in app purchases and subscriptions, and the iPhone maker of course takes a cut.
What does ATT mean for me and my iPhone?
In reality, ATT is good for you and privacy on your iPhone. The reason? Transparency. Even if you choose to allow tracking, at least you have done so with the full knowledge that it is happening. Apple’s iOS 14.5 is game-changing for mobile advertising more widely too. It’s thought Google’s Android will bring in something similar, which ultimately would see internet advertising changed, for the better, forever. So the implications of ATT are great for the privacy of iPhone users, and internet and smartphone users more broadly too. Privacy experts approve of Apple’s iOS 14.5 move. Sean Wright, SME application security lead at Immersive Labs says ATT’s “a good move by Apple.”As well as making things more transparent to users, he hopes it will force app developers “to seriously consider all the data they are attempting to collect, and if they really require it.”
How do I use ATT?
Once you’ve downloaded iOS 14.5, which is coming at some point during the next week, using ATT is easy. You simply wait for the pop up to appear in each app you use and allow, or don’t allow, tracking on a per app basis.Another cool tip that you might find useful is, you can also go to your settings in iOS 14.5 and turn off tracking altogether. Just go to Settings > Privacy > Tracking > Allow Apps to Request to Track.This will be automatically toggled to “on,” but you can toggle off the ability to track altogether here. That will stop a potentially annoying pop up appearing in each iOS app you open. You can also control the apps you have allowed to track here, if you want to turn them off, or enable them to track you.
You can also go to your iPhone settings in iOS 14.5 and turn off tracking altogether.
APPLE IPHONEIs there anything else I need to know?
The iOS 14.5 move is massive for iPhone privacy, but you need to be aware that apps do still collect your data. Apple’s privacy labels made that clear—they were a stark reminder that Facebook owned WhatsApp collects vast amounts of information and way more than its rivals. There is a decision you make when you use free apps and services and that’s whether to give them your data. If you are not paying for the product, you are the product, after all. At the same time, Apple does say ATT applies to its own apps, and we will hopefully see this in action in iOS 14.5.Experts have pointed out that like Cookie notices, the pop up to allow tracking may get annoying, so it’s important not to just “Allow” in a bid to speed things up. If you don’t want tracking at all, you can toggle it off in the settings as I described. Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET says: “ATT should not be ignored and viewed as yet another pop up which gently forces you to agree and accept it. This is a perfect time to allow people to reflect on their personal data and what the large corporations are doing with it. Companies such as Facebook heavily rely on iPhone users to consent to data sharing and such intrusion shouldn’t be taken lightly.”
Should I turn iPhone IDFA tracking off for all apps?
IOS.14.5’s ATT really is an outstanding new feature and to track, or not to track, is the key question here. If you care about privacy on your iPhone, and you are uncomfortable about the data being collected about you online, ATT now gives you the means to turn that off. In iOS 14.5, the choice, as they say, is yours—and that’s the truly important thing.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2021/04/24/ios-145-how-this-outstanding-new-feature-will-change-your-iphone-forever/-
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