But for iPhone owners, thats about to change in significant ways.
The move is a complete rethinking of privacy rights.
Privacy tweaks are usually opt-out and often buried deep in an apps tweaks.
Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it, Cook said.
Facebook declined to comment for this story.
Google declined to comment on Cooks remarks.
Privacy rights advocates, meanwhile, are pretty pleased.
The state of peoples privacy on iOS devices will be dramatically better than it is today.
Heres a rundown of what to expect.
What will change under Apples new rules?
Currently, apps gather all sorts of information about you as you use themthats not going to change.
The Identifier for Advertisers, or IDFA, is a standard machine identifier Apple created in 2012.
Google has its own version for Android devices called the Google Advertising ID, or GAID.
And there are other ways the data you generate by using an app gets shared.
you’re able to do this underAdvertising in your privacy settingson your iOS equipment.
But that will become an opt-in model when Apples privacy change kicks in.
Apple says its update will take effect in early spring, with iOS 14.5.
Companies can still share data for other purposeslike preventing fraud or for analytics.
The changes only apply to Apple devicesAndroids app store has announced no similar changes.
Apples new policies prohibit tricks for getting consent, too.
The prompt can only show onceso you cant be spammed with requests, either.
The change could be huge.
Some apps will likely decide to simply stop sharing tracking information instead of implementing the prompt.
The reason why more people dont opt out is because its very complicated, Egelman said.
So how can I still be tracked after the changes?
A company like Google can come along and say, Were going to put the entire market in ourselves.
Instead of having thousands of companies who provide advertising space, everyone should come to us, Ryan said.
In fact, Google has already said it wont bother with data-sharing on Apple devices anymore.
How will Apple enforce its policy?
Heres where things start to get tricky, according to experts.
Apple declined to comment on how it will enforce its new policies.
This article wasoriginally published on The Markupand was republished under theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeslicense.
