Whether iOS or Android, several apps on both ecosystems routinely collect a user’s data and share it with advertisers. Now, sharing a few primary data would have been fine, but most apps collect all sorts of user activities.
Everything gets recorded, from their interests on social media to what a user searches for in their browser or other apps.
Privacy has become a myth. As much as they would like to deny it, Apple’s iOS and iPhones are full of apps capable of following your activity across other apps and the internet Internetrowse it.
What’s even worse is that most of the collected data is sold to other companies, meaning you lose out on privacy while big businesses profit. Moreover, this data is used for social engineering and cajoles users into behaving similarly.
By giving you a unique ‘advertising ID,’ apps can track your online movements and serve up personalized ads – which is often why you’ll see an advert for something you were looking at online.
Fortunately, there’s a hidden list on the iPhone that tells you exactly which apps are following you around the Internet—you can block them from doing so.
A new iPhone update will require you to give apps permission to track your activity when you open them.
To turn off app tracking, you must open your iPhone Settings app, tap ‘Privacy,’ and hit ‘Tracking’ at the top.
This will give you access to a massive list of apps that gather data on you. You can tap on them to disable tracking on individual apps or even hit a button that switches off ad tracking for all apps.
It comes amid a broader privacy push from Apple after CEO Tim Cook said last year that “we believe users should have the choice over the data that is being collected about them and how it’s used.”
