According to a study, Apple‘s privacy measures in iOS 14 to ban apps from tracking users’ data haven’t totally deterred developers from engaging in the illegal behavior, and numerous apps are still tracking data despite users’ requests not to be tracked.
Apple’s new standards mainly live up to their promises in making tracking more difficult, according to an analysis of 1,759 iOS apps from the UK App Store before and after the significant privacy feature was adopted last year.
“At the same time, apps still widely use tracking technology of large companies, and send a range of user and device characteristics over the Internet for the purposes of cohort tracking and user fingerprinting,” said the team from the University of Oxford in the UK in a paper.
The researchers discovered real-world evidence of apps using “server-side code” to compute a mutual fingerprinting-derived identification, which is a violation of Apple’s new standards and demonstrates the limits of Apple’s enforcement ability as a privately-owned data protection agency.
According to Konrad Kollnig of the University of Oxford’s Department of Computer Science, “Apple itself engages in some forms of user tracking and exempts invasive data practices like first-party tracking and credit scoring from its new privacy regulations.”
“Consumers are being misled by app privacy nutrition labels, which are frequently false. These findings contradict the company’s marketing claims, as well as the expectations of many iOS users “The group made a point.
Despite positive advancements in recent months and years, particularly through Apple initiatives, app privacy still has a long way to go.
The researchers expressed their disappointment that violations of numerous parts of data protection and privacy rules continue to be common in apps, while enforcement of existing data protection laws against such acts remains infrequent.
“Apple’s privacy initiatives are limited by its closed-source iOS philosophy and the lack of transparency surrounding its App Store review policies enforcement. Apple’s decisions continue to be a major factor in the lack of transparency surrounding iOS privacy “was emphasised.
Apple’s Privacy Nutrition Labels were also found to be frequently erroneous and deceptive for consumers, according to the researchers.
“These findings contradict the company’s marketing promises, as well as the expectations of many iOS users,” they stated. Apple made two key enhancements to iOS 14 last year to protect user privacy: App Tracking Transparency (ATT), a mandatory opt-in approach for enabling tracking on iOS, and Privacy Nutrition Labels, which reveal what sorts of data each app uses.
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