https://9to5mac.com/2025/04/03/brazil-investigating-apple-app-tracking-meta/
Apple said today that it might be “forced” to disable a key anti-ad tracking feature in the European Union, reports DPA International.
“Intense lobbying efforts in Germany, Italy and other countries in Europe may force us to withdraw this feature to the detriment of European consumers,” Apple said in a statement to DPA.
Apple is referring to App Tracking Transparency (ATT), a feature that lets iPhone and iPad users decide whether to allow apps to track their activity across other apps and websites for advertising purposes. Users can choose to allow apps to ask for permission, or turn off tracking entirely.
Apple also said it will work to keep the feature available to Europeans. “We will continue to urge the relevant authorities in Germany, Italy and across Europe to allow Apple to continue providing this important privacy tool to our users.”
The actual problem:
… Apple abused its market power with ATT, giving itself preferential treatment …
They just don’t want to play by the same rules with ATT and are trying to blame the EU for that.
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There is that for sure.
The ideal would be that this would somehow be an anti-ad feature for all adversaries including Apple.
Although, not sure how removing this “preferential treatment” completely is better for everyone.
How is this implemented? Is it a popup asking for tracking permission, and does it appear only once or every time the app opens?
What is the default setting?
“to allow apps to ask for permission” is the default one, unless you’re a child, then “turn off tracking entirely” is the default one.
An app can ask for the permission anytime the developers like, but the pop-up appears only once.
A good question that no one seems to ask. The technical side of the App Tracking Transparency framework is very simple. Every device has a unique device ID. The App Tracking Transparency framework gives users a choice of whether to give it to developers.
That’s it! It doesn’t technically prevent tracking. That’s why you can “allow” an app to track you or politely ”ask [the] app not to track you,” but cannot “deny” an app to track you. An app can use other techniques to fingerprint you if the developers want. Apple won’t reverse engineer an app to find out what’s inside, and if it did, it still doesn’t know what happens on the server side.
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