A new batch of mobile phone analytics from Flurry suggests that 96 percent of iOS users who’ve updated to iOS 14.5 have stopped apps from tracking their information.
These stats are U.S.-specific, but I’d expect Canadians to be closely following the trend as well.
When Apple finally released iOS 14.5 in late April, the headlining feature is called App Tracking Transparency. This, in essence, allows users to choose if they want to allow developers to share their data with advertising companies. This means Facebook is still scraping your data, but it can no track you across multiple apps and services that it doesn’t own.
In simple terms enabling App, Tracking Transparency means you’ll see fewer targeted ads. Still, your information shouldn’t make its way to data brokerage companies that you didn’t really agree to use. You can read more about it in our App Tracking Transparency explainer.
Companies like Facebook and others that have built their empires on advanced ad tracking came out pretty strongly against the new policy on Apple’s devices, but it’s nice to see that Apple was right and consumers would rather not be tracked at all.
The data comes from the Verizon-owned company Flurry Analytics which says it’s used in over a million apps. The company says that the global number of users that opt into being tracked is a little higher than the U.S. numbers at 12 percent, but that still below some advertisers who estimated 40 percent of users would opt into being tracked to Ars Technica.
Source: Ars Technica
