New Apple tracking rules defeated by European advertising associations

A group of 16 European digital advertising associations led by Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB) signed a letter in which they express their dissatisfaction with Apple's new plans to strengthen the privacy of iOS and iPadOS 14 users.

In the 2020 edition of WWDC, the technological giant announced that the new iPhone and iPad operating system has enhanced security and privacy features, with an emphasis on new protection against the tracking that apps or websites do.

Thus, on iOS and iPadOS 14, applications will have to ask for additional permissions, by means of a pop-up warning when opening them, in order to be able to track users and to be able to send the collected information to third parties for advertising reasons.

WWDC 2020

In the letter addressed to Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, the associations affirm that the system that the apple company wants to put in place is not compatible with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation regarding the obtaining of users' consent for the presentation personalized ads.

The group that has associations supported by Facebook or Alphabet indicates that, since applications will have to ask for permission twice, the risk of users refusing is greater.

The document explains that the system proposed by Apple is not fully customizable by developers and is not interoperable with the standards of the digital advertising market, such as the Transparency & Consent Framework of IAB Europe. In addition, Apple's strategy may pose problems in terms of competition, as it may give advantage to the company's advertising services.

Reuters further advances that, in response, Apple engineers announced that the company will make available a free tool that uses aggregated and anonymous data to help understand if advertising campaigns are having the intended effect and that it will not cause the pop warning -up appearance.