> Apple's attempts to block data tracking as you travel around the web could have a real impact on companies that rely on your personal information to make their billions.
asking the people that working in adtech, cross-device usage prediction and the likes: do you actually think it will disrupt your business or there are always workarounds and are relatively chill about it?
Apple attacks the core primitives of Adtech very strategically with this update. This is very smart actually, much better than the first iteration.
They're going after the meat right away, like cookie synchronization ("Tracker collusion") and the first-party tracker hack that Criteo pioneered, effectively disabling almost all the tracking possibilities on iOS. As a user, this is awesome.
And if you want to track, you need to provide both value (i.e. an authenticated service) as well as get explicit consent from the user.
Unfortunately, this will also serve to concentrate the power in the hands of Google and Facebook, who have and/or will create such authenticated embeds.
Note that all this hardtalk specifically excludes the mobile ad IDs. Apple would face much more headwind from GOOG and FB if they went about killing these. This is going to be very interesting, as Apple will need to carefully tread up to a point, after which there could be harsher repercussions.
They also know that an iPhone without access to Google Maps, Search, Mail, Authenticator, Youtube and a whole lot of other essential services won't be worth much to end users anymore.
Source: I'm working in Adtech, but we chose a different approach of giving users an actual benefit and being careful, compliant and frugal with data. All these recent updates about Apple and GDPR mainly hit the really bad players of the industry that just hoard sensitive data through shady channels and arbitrage it to hell — and I consider that a good thing.
> They also know that an iPhone without access to Google Maps, Search, Mail, Authenticator, Youtube and a whole lot of other essential services won't be worth much to end users anymore.
I don't know. Apple Maps is almost as good as Google Maps for me. Search I could use DuckDuckGo. Mail I use the native iOS mail client and could easily switch out from my GMail account to anything else. Authenticator I don't use and don't know anyone else who does either. YouTube's an interesting one, but I use it tons less since I got Spotify Premium.
If it was a choice between Apple protecting my privacy and losing all Google services these days, after everything players like Google and Facebook have done? It wouldn't be a difficult decision to keep my iPhone.
> They also know that an iPhone without access to Google Maps, Search, Mail, Authenticator, Youtube and a whole lot of other essential services won't be worth much to end users anymore.
Google Authenticator => Authy (it reimplements google auth)
Search => Safari
Gmail => Native Mail (its not like Google will drop IMAP support)
Killing YouTube on iOS would be pretty bad for Apple, but I’m sure that wouldn’t be profitable for Google (cutting off a third of an already-unprofitable company? no thanks). What’s left bedides that, Google docs? Well Apple has their own suite so does Microsoft. And they both have web editors that rival Google Docs and support multi-user editing. In general I’m pretty skeptical about this assertion that Apple “can’t” step on Google’s toes.
Authy encrypts all of your data with a private passkey that is never sent to Twilio (the parent company) [0]. I found the ability to sync 2FA across devices to be convenient and a good compromise to “if you lose your phone, you’re screwed.” I can understand both perspectives, but I think Authy has done a great job at improving the usability of 2FA without sacrificing security. This is certainly more secure than SMS-based 2FA which most people currently use.
(Disclaimer: I am currently employed by Twilio. I am not involved with Authy in any way)
Microsoft Authenticator is another alternative and it doesn't need anything (plus is handy for MS 2fa). There's DUO. And I'd wager there are countless other apps as the standard is really simple.
I used to work in adtech, though not the parts focussed on tracking folks. I think this will cause some disruption for people in the short term, and if Apple stays committed to this line of attack, it could really have a long term impact.
But on the other hand, IP+UA is a very good signal when you don't have a lot of devices behind NAT, and if you just have a Facebook ServiceWorker installed, it could track all of the IP addresses you use. And there is nothing preventing first-party tracking, e.g. what if Facebook starts a "Facebook Publishing Platform" which is basically a section of Facebook.com designed to ensure that you get all the user tracking as before. Or what if publications now ask for "Login with Facebook to read this article".
I think there's actually very minor benefits to the type of tracking that unauthenticated that they're doing, so while they might be able to track less, it won't have a material impact.
asking the people that working in adtech, cross-device usage prediction and the likes: do you actually think it will disrupt your business or there are always workarounds and are relatively chill about it?