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Apple’s New OS Feature Sparks Concerns

Several European marketing and digital advertisers had expressed their concerns over US tech giant Apple Inc.’s plans to require apps to request additional permission from users before monitoring them in other apps and websites.

The issue came after the firm revealed information about some features of its upcoming iPhone operating system (iOS) last week.  They will ask for the need of apps to flash a pop-up screen. This will be immediately before they can activate a form of tracking usually needed to display personalized advertisements.

Facebook and Google are the biggest among thousands of companies that keep track of online consumers’ habits and interests to present them with relevant ads.

 

The Issue with Apple’s New iOS 14 Feature

The new feature in the company’s iOS 14 had sixteen European associations critique them. Some of them have backing from US companies Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. They criticized the group for not adhering to an ad-industry system for requesting user content under the European privacy policies.

Apple’s plans for iOS 14 are a continuation of tracking limits it has previously introduced, including those in iOS 13, which mainly aimed to allow apps to monitor users in the background.

In the future, apps that intend to use the feature will need to ask users’ permission twice. This allows for the capability of users to not accept, according to the associations.

The iPhone-maker stated that they developed the feature to enable better transparency. Specifically on how the phone is using the user’s information.

 

An optional feature

The company previously showed that developers can display additional screens beforehand to clarify the need for the user’s approval. This was during training sessions at a developer conference held last week.

The pop-up screen says an app, “would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies”. It then provides the developer several lines below the main text to explain why approval is needed.

This is not essential until the app tries to gain access to a numeric identifier. The app can then utilize this identifier for tracking, and apps only need to secure authorization once.

Still, the group of European advertisers said the pop-up warning and the limited ability to customize it still has a high risk of user refusal.

 



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