Apple Has Quietly Started Tracking iPhone Users Again, And It's Tricky To Opt Out
Jim Edwards Oct. 11, 2012
Apple's launch of the iPhone 5 in September came with a bunch of new commercials to promote the device.
But Apple didn't shout quite so loud about an enhancement to its new mobile operating system, iOS 6, which also occurred in September: The company has started tracking users so that advertisers can target them again, through a new tracking technology called IFA or IDFA.
Previously, Apple had all but disabled tracking of iPhone users by advertisers when it stopped app developers from utilizing Apple mobile device data via UDID, the unique, permanent, non-deletable serial number that previously identified every Apple device.
For the last few months, iPhone users have enjoyed an unusual environment in which advertisers have been largely unable to track and target them in any meaningful way.
In iOS 6, however, tracking is most definitely back on, and it's more effective than ever, multiple mobile advertising executives familiar with IFA tell us. (Note that Apple doesn't mention IFA in its iOS 6 launch page).
..
I've been asked perhaps a half-dozen times why cellular companies would "track" their users. I have given up trying to explain that it is impossible for them /not/ to track their users; i.e., that the whole point of a cellular network is to keep track of each user's location, so that they can carry on conversations while moving from one cell zone to another.
Apple has decided to cut out the middleman, i.e., to eliminate the need to pay the cellular companies for user location data. With GPS software and a globally-unique-identifier in its mobile phones, it can offer advertisers both a click list and a current location, which makes it much easier to sell things to those who use Apple's phones. This assumes, of course, that those users are "online", but I'd bet that only a small percentage of Apple's users employ those products only as phones.
Some users will seek ways around the monitoring. It remains to be seen if they will succeed.
Bill Horne Moderator