Apple has once again upped the ante on data privacy, warning app developers that they could be removed from its app store if they didn’t comply with its new anti-tracking measures.
Apple’s Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi, while delivering his virtual keynote the European Data Protection and Privacy Conference, said, “developers who fail to meet the standard can have their apps taken down from the app store.”
“The aim is to empower our users to decide when or if they want to allow an app to track them in a way that could be shared across other companies’ apps or websites,” he added. “We’re responsible not only for upholding Apple’s commitments to privacy, but for actually embodying those commitments as code.”
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App Tracking Transparency
The tech giant was scheduled to roll out the new measure, called App Tracking Transparency, this year but had since postponed to 2021 to allow developers to make necessary changes. Apple’s proposal had drawn resistance from many quarters, including Facebook. In multiple blogs published on August 26, the social media giant expressed its displeasure, squarely blaming Apple for hurting “many of our developers and publishers at an already difficult time for businesses”. Facebook also claimed it won’t collect IDFA on its own apps on iOS 14 devices, while reminding its users they had a choice about how their data was used on Facebook.
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In his speech, Federighi, alluded to Tim Cook’s 2018 warning on “weaponization of private data collection”, to stress on the issue: “Never before has the right to privacy, and the right to keep personal data under your own control, been under assault like it is today.”
Cook, while giving a keynote address at the 40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (ICDPPC), had said personal information is being “weaponized against us with military efficiency,” and just stopped of naming Google and Facebook.
