Some folks (including me) think that Apple is getting greedier. As noted by 9to5Mac, two developers and security researchers who identify themselves as “Mysk” have raised privacy concerns about the App Store getting more ads. More specifically, the developers revealed that iOS sends Apple a detailed log of how users interact with the App Store.
According to developers, the company has been tracking users’ actions within the App Store since the release of iOS 14.6 in May 2021. Interestingly, as noted by BGR’s José Adorno, the company introduced the App Tracking Transparency feature a month earlier with iOS 14.5.
There’s no official explanation as to how Apple uses this data, but it seems that the company is still tracking users as they browse the App Store. 9to5Mac says it’s worth noting that “since Apple started offering ads on the App Store, developers have access to some statistics about how their ads are performing – so such data may be related to this.”
The article adds this: “Even though Apple may claim that the collected data is not shared with third parties, this sounds quite controversial since Apple has been creating barriers to make it harder for third parties to track iOS users, which has affected ad platforms from Google and Meta. And according to Mysk, App Store data is sent to Apple even when the Personalized Ads option is turned off.”
Meanwhile, in a Macworld op-ed you should read, Dan Moren writes that, with Apple ending its latest fiscal year with just shy of $100 billion in profit alone, it’s “jarring to see some of the moves the company has lately made that feel, for lack of a better word, cheap.”
Such as? Moren notes, “….the almost pathological need to take its cut on every transaction of the App Store, the recent influx of advertising, raising prices on its services. All of these are tactics that might have benefited a hardscrabble company trying to eke out a living, but when it’s applied to one that’s making more money than most countries in the world, they come across instead as unseemly.”
He concludes with this statement: “A few years back, Apple, along with 200 other large companies, puts its name on a statement that proclaimed that there’s more to business than profits, including protecting the environment, providing for employees, combatting economic inequality, and providing value to customers. While Apple has made great inroads in some of those, it’s incumbent on the most valuable company in the world to make the biggest moves. Change, as they say, begins at home, and Cupertino should take a close look at what it’s sacrificing for the sake of a few dollars more.”
