Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Last year, Apple enacted App Tracking Transparency, a mandatory policy that forbids app makers from tracking user activity across other apps without first receiving those users’ explicit permission. Privacy advocates praised the initiative, and Facebook warned it would spell certain doom for companies that rely on targeted advertising. However, research published […]
Enlarge / A privacy notice appears on an iPhone 12 under the new iOS 14.5.1 operating system. Developers of an application have to ask for the user’s permission to allow cross-app tracking. (credit: Picture Alliance | Getty Images) Apple has allowed app developers to collect data from its 1 billion iPhone users for targeted advertising, […]
Apple’s AirTag. [credit: Samuel Axon ] Apple’s AirTag is not a revolutionary new product. Rather, it’s a significant refinement of an idea that, up until now, has been fairly niche. It works very, very well, but it works so well it seems to undermine Apple’s attempts to focus its products on privacy and security. We […]
Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems has filed a complaint against Google in France alleging that the US tech giant is illegally tracking users on Android phones without their consent. Android phones generate unique advertising codes, similar to Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), that allow Google and third parties to track users’ browsing behavior in order […]
Apple CEO Tim Cook on stage during an Apple event in September 2018. (credit: Valentina Palladino) With Apple’s big app-tracking policy change just around the corner, Chinese companies drew a warning from Cupertino that their efforts to circumvent the change will not be successful. At the same time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to shift […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) The prospect of Web users being tracked by the sites they visit has prompted several countermeasures over the years, including using Privacy Badger or an alternate anti-tracking extension, enabling private or incognito browsing sessions, or clearing cookies. Now, websites have a new way to defeat all three. The technique leverages the […]
Enlarge / Social media applications are seen on an iPhone in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland, on December 17, 2020. Facebook has disabled several features on its Messenger app to comply with new data usage rules currently being put in place in the EU as part of the ePrivacy Directive. (Photo illustration by Jaap […]