The Californian company can be criticized in many aspects and some of them with a certain reason, but the technological community agrees that Apple cares about the security and privacy of its users without caring about improving or losing the commercial relationship with some companies like Meta. In this post, we are going to see how you can activate the “ask the application not to track you” function.
Ask the app not to track you
When we download an application, when we are going to use it for the first time, a message appears. pop pup where it tells you if you want the app to track you or not. Regardless of your choice, you can continue to use the full functionality of the app, without any limitations, as it is a Apple Mandatory and developers have to include it if they want to be able to have their Applications in the App Store. Of course, the developers can customize part of the message to explain why the app asks to track your activity.
You can too visit product page of the app on the App Store for more details about how the app developer uses your data. if you choose Ask the app not to track, the app developer cannot access the identifier for system advertising (IDFA), which is often used for tracking. The app is also not allowed to track your activity using other information that identifies you or the device, for example, your email address.
Manage activity tracking permissions
If at the time of use the app, If you determined that it might be a good option for the app to track you, you can change the settings of any of the applications you have downloaded at any time. To do this, you have to perform the following steps in the different operating systems that Apple currently has. The procedure is the next:
- On iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch: Go to Settings > Privacy and security > Tracking.
- On Apple TV: Go to Settings > General > Privacy > Tracking.
- On Mac, this feature will not be available and it is not known if it will be included in the next versions of macOS.
Once you have determined the application you want to manage, You have to disable the option that allows apps to request to track you in the Privacy and security settings. With this option turned off, you will not receive requests from apps to track your activity, that is, all apps that request permission to track while this setting is turned off will be treated as if you had pressed “Ask the app not to track.”
Finally, you can also choose to request that all apps that you have previously allowed to track your activity stop, or you can allow only apps that you have previously allowed to track your activity to continue to track your activity.
If you can’t turn on Allow apps to ask to track you
In some circumstances, No the option Allow apps to ask to track you can be activatedwhose three specific cases we will see below and which, under no circumstances, are security violations.
- If the user has a child account or is under the age of 18 by year of birth and is signed in with their Apple ID
- If your Apple ID is managed by a company or educational institution, or if yours is a managed device and uses a configuration profile that limits tracking
- If the Apple ID has been created in the last 3 days.
In conclusion, while this option is deactivated, Apps that request to track user activity will not be able to access the identifier for advertising (IDFA), so they will not be able to access information about you.