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Beginning in iOS 10, when a user enables “Limit Ad Tracking,” the OS will send along the advertising identifier with a new value of “00000000-0000-0000-

by kylec 10y ago

Beginning in iOS 10, when a user enables “Limit Ad Tracking,” the OS will send along the advertising identifier with a new value of “00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.” I think it would be better if iOS just generated a new, random ID every time. If the app knows that the user has disabled ad tracking, it could change the behavior or prevent the user from using it until tracking is turned back on.

comex 10y ago
The latter at least would lead to App Store rejection.
- Benjammer 10y ago
  And the former would probably lead to your bundle ID being banned from the app store if they catch you doing something shady like that. Every time you submit an update to the app store for review you have to check a box that says that you acknowledge that you are using the advertising identifier in some capacity in your app, and another that says that you are faithfully abiding by the user's "limit tracking" iOS setting. If they catch you lying about these things they say they will remove and ban your app (no future updates either) from the store.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Will Apple enforce it? That sounds like a lot of work for them to check. Apple is really strict about some rules, but others they just don't care. Push notification spam, for example, is a constant problem even though it's against the rules.
    - LeoNatan25 10y ago
      Even if they don't catch bad developers at the time of submission, once users start complaining, that will trigger an investigation and the developer will eventually be caught.
      - teddyh 10y ago
        > once users start complaining, that will trigger an investigation Why?
      - mikeash 10y ago
        Hasn't happened for push notification spam.
        rbritton 10y ago
        So enforcement really depends on whether Apple themselves would limit functionality in their own apps if ad tracking is off.
- erdevs 10y ago
  Is that definitively the case right now? (I'm asking because I genuinely don't know; not being rhetorical.) And will it definitely continue to be the case in the future when ios10 launches (and after)? (More rhetorical here, though curious if Apple has made some definitively clear and unqualified statement here that'd be hard to walk back in the future.) I think the random id would be preferable from a user pov. But this may represent Apple's attempt to play nice with mobile ad companies and app pubs that rely on ads in at least making it easy for them to identify no-track users. (Then again, they could accomplish that in a more direct way by just having a flag here, which they may also do?)
  - potatolicious 10y ago
    Yep, Apple giveth and Apple taketh away - broad categories of things that are considered user-hostile are banned, and if you try to do it Apple swings the banhammer liberally. Also Apple's guidelines re: permissions is that the app must degrade in the absence of permissions gracefully, and any kind of "punishing the user" for denying perms is absolutely prohibited. For all the bad things about the walled garden, this is one perk that is real. As for Apple walking back on these things - anything is possible, but considering how hard they've been beating on the user privacy drum I doubt this will change in the foreseeable future IMO the "zero" ID is preferable to a random ID. This way if anyone has legitimate reason to detect for this condition they can, but Apple has enough control over the platform to ban anyone doing so abusively. It's also more in line with Apple's permission systems (e.g., you can detect if you have Contacts permissions, rather than it returning, say, fake/empty contacts).
    - erdevs 10y ago
      Couldn't they also just let you check a flag instead of checking for a magic number / proscribed id? And to be more specific on my question, I get that they don't allow apps to punish users explicitly for OS-enabled choices. But what about rewarding users? Ie you can play/use the app however you want. But we'll give you 50 coins/10 loyalty points/whatever if you enable location tracking? I mean to follow this all the way through... it should mean that apps can't choose to show, say, rewarded video ads (presently a $1B+ revenue/yr industry on iOS) only to users who have do not restrict ad tracking. Because then by definition only users who don't restrict ad tracking could get the reward from viewing the video. Will this be the case? It's an important question and a lot of startup value could be effected depending on the answer.
sparky_ 10y ago
Presumably this is their attempt at being "nice" to the various users of IDFA, who often times key off the IDFA to store a value of a user profile, conversion event or other data. By using a fixed zero value, it allows said parties (be they ad networks, analytics providers, etc) to simply discard the record, rather than blowing up their DB with an unbounded number of useless rows.
tomc1985 10y ago
Perhaps it's a favor to the world's database administrators, who won't be deluged with random, useless data.
- Ntrails 10y ago
  Nobody is nice to the DBAs, it's like a law or something.
thirdsun 10y ago
I prefer developers to definitely know that users opted out of tracking. It avoids useless, misleading data, sends a clear message and maybe convinces some developers to prefer proper pricing instead of ads as a monetization strategy.

by kylec 10y ago

comex 10y ago

The latter at least would lead to App Store rejection.

Benjammer 10y ago
And the former would probably lead to your bundle ID being banned from the app store if they catch you doing something shady like that. Every time you submit an update to the app store for review you have to check a box that says that you acknowledge that you are using the advertising identifier in some capacity in your app, and another that says that you are faithfully abiding by the user's "limit tracking" iOS setting. If they catch you lying about these things they say they will remove and ban your app (no future updates either) from the store.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Will Apple enforce it? That sounds like a lot of work for them to check. Apple is really strict about some rules, but others they just don't care. Push notification spam, for example, is a constant problem even though it's against the rules.
  - LeoNatan25 10y ago
    Even if they don't catch bad developers at the time of submission, once users start complaining, that will trigger an investigation and the developer will eventually be caught.
    - teddyh 10y ago
      > once users start complaining, that will trigger an investigation Why?
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Hasn't happened for push notification spam.
      - rbritton 10y ago
        So enforcement really depends on whether Apple themselves would limit functionality in their own apps if ad tracking is off.
erdevs 10y ago
Is that definitively the case right now? (I'm asking because I genuinely don't know; not being rhetorical.) And will it definitely continue to be the case in the future when ios10 launches (and after)? (More rhetorical here, though curious if Apple has made some definitively clear and unqualified statement here that'd be hard to walk back in the future.) I think the random id would be preferable from a user pov. But this may represent Apple's attempt to play nice with mobile ad companies and app pubs that rely on ads in at least making it easy for them to identify no-track users. (Then again, they could accomplish that in a more direct way by just having a flag here, which they may also do?)
- potatolicious 10y ago
  Yep, Apple giveth and Apple taketh away - broad categories of things that are considered user-hostile are banned, and if you try to do it Apple swings the banhammer liberally. Also Apple's guidelines re: permissions is that the app must degrade in the absence of permissions gracefully, and any kind of "punishing the user" for denying perms is absolutely prohibited. For all the bad things about the walled garden, this is one perk that is real. As for Apple walking back on these things - anything is possible, but considering how hard they've been beating on the user privacy drum I doubt this will change in the foreseeable future IMO the "zero" ID is preferable to a random ID. This way if anyone has legitimate reason to detect for this condition they can, but Apple has enough control over the platform to ban anyone doing so abusively. It's also more in line with Apple's permission systems (e.g., you can detect if you have Contacts permissions, rather than it returning, say, fake/empty contacts).
  - erdevs 10y ago
    Couldn't they also just let you check a flag instead of checking for a magic number / proscribed id? And to be more specific on my question, I get that they don't allow apps to punish users explicitly for OS-enabled choices. But what about rewarding users? Ie you can play/use the app however you want. But we'll give you 50 coins/10 loyalty points/whatever if you enable location tracking? I mean to follow this all the way through... it should mean that apps can't choose to show, say, rewarded video ads (presently a $1B+ revenue/yr industry on iOS) only to users who have do not restrict ad tracking. Because then by definition only users who don't restrict ad tracking could get the reward from viewing the video. Will this be the case? It's an important question and a lot of startup value could be effected depending on the answer.

sparky_ 10y ago

Presumably this is their attempt at being "nice" to the various users of IDFA, who often times key off the IDFA to store a value of a user profile, conversion event or other data. By using a fixed zero value, it allows said parties (be they ad networks, analytics providers, etc) to simply discard the record, rather than blowing up their DB with an unbounded number of useless rows.

tomc1985 10y ago

Perhaps it's a favor to the world's database administrators, who won't be deluged with random, useless data.

Ntrails 10y ago
Nobody is nice to the DBAs, it's like a law or something.

thirdsun 10y ago

I prefer developers to definitely know that users opted out of tracking. It avoids useless, misleading data, sends a clear message and maybe convinces some developers to prefer proper pricing instead of ads as a monetization strategy.