Application developers are exploring new surreptitious ways of tracking users to circumvent Apple’s new privacy rules, which threaten to bring down the mobile advertising industry in the coming months.
In early 2021, an iPhone update will prevent applications from using advertising identifiers known as IDFA without obtaining each user’s explicit consent for targeting. Developers expect more than two-thirds of users to block tracking when they see a pop-up in their applications.
Some app makers say they plan to use invasive tracking techniques, such as “fingerprinting the device” to get around the new restrictions – although this could cause them to be kicked out of the App Store if caught.
“100 percent, everyone will try to take their fingerprints, whether Apple abides by its rules or not,” said a mobile game developer.
Privacy advocates have welcomed Apple’s changes, but warn that it is never possible to completely eliminate tracking.
“There will still be tracking,” said Andrés Arrieta, director of consumer privacy engineering at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights activist. “We’ll still see apps trying to do nefarious things. No matter what you do, you will have these bad actors. “
Facebook has led criticism of Apple’s move, publishing a series of newspaper ads in December that accuse Apple of depriving app makers of up to half of its advertising revenue by removing personalization.
Few developers are willing to fight publicly with Apple, whose App Store is the guardian of a $ 500 billion savings. But in particular, the creators of some of the most popular apps on the App Store are concerned, given the importance of advertising as a means of revenue and distribution.
“The impact is almost impossible to predict,” said the head of a major mobile game developer.
“This is a huge, huge change,” said the head of another leading mobile game developer. “It is the biggest risk we have[as a company]. . . This can really affect us negatively. ”
Developers are concerned that many in the advertising industry are still unaware of the magnitude of the changes to come. “Brands and agencies have no idea – they don’t have a complete sense of where the ecosystem is headed,” said an application manufacturer’s policy executive. “Technology intermediaries are being forced to solve the problem.”
Under such pressure, some developers are desperate to consider using new and more invasive forms of tracking, even if users deny their applications permission to use IDFA.
The device’s fingerprint can be used to recognize repeated visits from the same smartphone, even across multiple apps. The technique, which is prohibited by Apple’s App Store rules, but can be difficult to detect, works by correlating a combination of a device’s hardware and software characteristics, settings such as internet connections, battery or language settings, and usage patterns .
Another way to track people between apps is to use the same email address to sign up for various services and games. “Hashed e-mails”, where addresses are transformed into a sequence of letters and numbers, allow companies to share user details without directly delivering an individual’s e-mail address to their partners.
While these techniques may be difficult for Apple to detect, the cost of being caught – and losing access to the world’s most profitable mobile store – can be enormous. “Do you want to play with fire?” asked a developer.