The continuing battle between Apple and online ad tracking may get a bit more heated.
Business Insider reported (citing the Future of Privacy Forum) that, as the newest iteration of the tech giant’s mobile software debuts this week, there will be a new setting that serves as an additional bulwark against ad tracking. That comes on top of the features already embedded in the iOS system that allow users to “limit” ad tracking. The ability for advertisers to target specific demographics (say, 18- to 34-year-old men, Business Insider posited, interested in football) is thwarted by that aforementioned option.
But some ad firms are able to use locations or other methods tied to the “Identifier for Advertising” (IDFA) to help work around the iOS 9 protections. Now, iOS 10 will effectively render that IDFA useless by showing it as a string of zeros.
Could firms continue to work around even the more stringent Apple iOS 10 protections? Business Insider said that one app marketing tracker, Kochava, is intent on using a fingerprint-matching solution to sidestep the limit ad tracking option (and, notably, only 17 percent of iPhone users have actually enabled that blocker).
