(FT) Privacy rules on Apple’s 1 billion iPhone users have been left to the loose interpretation by ad companies who have been granted leeway to obtain aggregated and anonymized data.
After announcing a privacy policy that prevents the collection of user data based on their unique profiles, Apple reportedly told developers they could observe “signals” from an iPhone at a group level without uniquely identifying it for tailored ads.
The chief operating officer at BlueConic, a customer data platform, Cory Munchbach, says the iPhone giant stepped back from a strict reading of rules because the impacts on the mobile ad ecosystem would be huge. Cory says Apple’s relaxed stance on the privacy solution breaks the rules set for its iPhone users.
AppsFlyer CEO Oren Kaniel says anonymized tracking is becoming a norm, with aggregated solutions now accounting for about 95% of its clients after initial backlash.
Apple’s move is seen as a strategy offering a general destination for developers. Analysts say that user-level data can be misused by opaque third parties.
AAPL: NASDAQ is up +0.84%.
