A Wider View: iOS 14.5, Why Is It Important?

Privacy has become a big thing in recent years as people have realised that many technological companies have too much information about them and it is not exactly clear what is done with that information. This is where iOS 14.5 comes in and how Apple plans to change privacy on your phone.

Credit: The Verge

iOS 14.5 launches with App Tracking Transparency (ATT), which could help end the identifier for advertisers (IDFA) which is a method that is used by different apps to track you on your iPhone across different apps and services. IDFA is been on iOS for many years now and it gives every iPhone a unique tracking number that tracks your activity between apps. This is the reason you start seeing ads about something you were planning to buy. For example, you open up Lazada to buy a backpack and then when you open Instagram later that day, you start seeing ads for that backpack. It is not a coincidence because what has happened here is that both these apps have shared your unique tracking number between each other.

Credit: The Verge

What iOS 14.5 does is prevent this number from being automatically shared between apps. If you want to share it, you have to manually allow it or you can prevent all apps from sharing you can toggle that off as well. Apple has done this to give users the choice and for users to make the decision on if they want to be tracked or not as well as provide more transparency between user and developer. In iOS 14.5 the developer will also be allowed to explain themselves and let you know why they want to track you which will allow the user to make a more informed decision. According to Apples Senior VP of software Craig Federighi, stock Apple apps will not be part of ATT as none of these apps share data between other apps so this will be mainly for third party apps.

This is set to hurt a lot of developers especially the likes of Facebook and Instagram as these apps track you across most apps and websites you visit using IDFA because their main source of income does come from advertising. This has lead to companies like Facebook putting a lot of pressure on users to turn off the ATT feature, with some users reporting that there have been pop ups on Facebook and Instagram stating that tracking helps keep these platforms free of charge.

Credit: Dave Stangis

Facebook has always been against ATT and says that this new feature will make it tougher and more expensive for ad networks to easily target customers which will hurt small businesses more than anyone. They have even taken out newspaper ads that promote their objections towards Apples changes and state that these changes hurt websites and apps that relay on ads to keep themselves afloat. This might also make these websites and apps start subscription services for content that was previously free.

Apple however feel that they are not doing anything wrong as they are giving these companies a chance to make a case for themselves. Developers will have control over when to show Apple’s prompt, specifically to give apps like Facebook a chance to make their case to users about why they should allow tracking.

So what does this mean for the users? Well the users are finally getting more control over where their information goes and if they want to share their information with these apps. This is indeed a step in the right direction as it is always important for there to be more transparency between people and the developer. However, this does mean that free services we have been used to might start being more subscription based in order for these companies to make ends meet. Privacy does indeed come at a cost.