Apple is cracking down on Chinese tech companies that are working on ways to circumvent application tracking transparency rules, reports Financial Times.
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Beginning with iOS 14.5, Apple plans to start requiring application developers to obtain express user permission before accessing an iPhone or IDFA advertising identifier, and earlier this week, the news suggested that the China Advertising Association was testing a tool to get around Apple’s rules.
Apple on Thursday sent notices to at least two Chinese app developers using methods to track usage of the app without the user’s permission. “We found that your app collects user and device information to create a unique identifier for the user’s device,” says the email from Apple, which says that the developer must update the app to comply with the App Store rules by 14 days or you risk being removed from the app store.
According Financial Times, the developer of the application in question was using a tool called CAID, which was developed by the aforementioned China Advertising Association. The China Advertising Association said this week that CAID is not “in opposition” to Apple’s privacy policy, but that it may not be accurate given the notices that Apple sent today.
A veteran of the Chinese marketing industry said Financial Times that “large and small companies” in China are considering CAID, but Apple’s recent actions “will put an end to these tests”. Some of China’s largest technology companies, such as Baidu, ByteDance and Tencent, are testing or implementing CAID to identify users.
ByteDance, for example, recommended that developers use their SDK to issue CAID1 and CAID2 identifiers. One is based on the user’s IP address and the other is based on the phone’s IMEI, which is a unique identification number. The CAID1 and CAID2 identifiers violate Apple rules because they do not ask the user for permission before collecting this data. ByteDance also recommended that developers use “fingerprint and probabilistic correspondence” to identify users, which also goes against the App Store Guidelines for App Tracking Transparency.
The China Advertising Association said it is developing additional services that will collect and store users’ personal data to create a “fingerprint” for each person. Any application that uses the CAID system will collect user data and send it to a central server to create a CAID identifier that will be used for the purpose of user identification between applications. CAA states that users can choose to opt out of CAID, but by Apple’s definitions, this is not allowed in the first place.
Technology experts believe that Chinese apps plan to tweak their apps in “various ways” to outperform Apple’s App Store review team, comparing it to a “cat and mouse” game. Apple has said several times that apps that disregard user preferences when it comes to tracking ads will be rejected, which could cause difficulties for Chinese companies and the Chinese government in the future.
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