Ad tracking war goes on as Apple brings new features

The ad tracking war continues, as Apple has just launched a new “privacy report” feature on its iOS devices. Companies must now share more information about the apps, and services they use on these devices. It will show users which individual apps are accessing which personal data.

Honest ad tracking reports

The new report will reveal how much information was shared with advertisers via third-party websites and apps. Bit it comes after an earlier privacy investigation. The report will also provide a detailed breakdown of the types of data shared between apps. Moreover, it will let users know what is being done with that information.

According to Thomas Husson, Forrester analyst, ”Apple continues to double down on privacy.” He believes that Apple is “setting the tone for the rest of the industry.”

Also, Apple came with some other privacy-focused updates. For instance, Siri, the AI smart speaker assistant will not send them to Apple server, as Amazon Echo does. The Apple devices will hide their IP addresses. Thus, they will prevent third parties, such as marketers and advertisers from tracking users’ browsing history.

Also, the Safary brower brings a new privacy feature which prevents third-party websites track them.

Finally, iCloud users will have the change to hide their identity from advertisers. Moreover, the “hide my email” feature will also hide email addresses when users sign up to online services.

However, a previous move by Apple to offer its users more control over their privacy was criticized by many companies. Facebook and other free-to-use services reacted nervously, as advertising is a substantial source of revenue for them.

More features that surprise competition

Apple also announced updates for its video calling platform – Facetime. Thus, they include multiple-speaker viewing and a portrait mode with blurred backgrounds. Also, users will have the ability to schedule chats and create web links.

Thus, Facetime may seriously compete with apps such as Zoom.

This will allow iOS users to also have FaceTime with Windows and Android device owners. Until now, the service only worked between Apple devices. These are already part of the new iOS15.

Ben Wood, CSS Insight chief analyst says that this move “has sparked explosive growth in group video calling.” Also, the move was absolutely necessary for the company, to keep up the pace, as Teams and Zoom started earlier.