Apple CEO Tim Cook made a special speech during the EU Privacy Conference at the EU Parliament in Brussels, Belgium on October 24, 2018.
Yves Herman | Reuters
Apple on Monday updated its App Store to display “privacy labels” describing information that iPhone apps collect about users.
Labels to download the app will be displayed prominently under a button. Most apps receive three labels, and information app makers have to submit to Apple to update their apps.
The move is the latest in a long line of new features introduced by Apple to control ad tracking and other practices that collect user data from iPhone users. In recent years, Apple has relied heavily on privacy features to differentiate its products from competitors, including phone makers using Google’s Android.
Monday’s announcement for the App Store, the only way for software makers to distribute iPhone apps, is a key privacy feature, and is an example of how Apple uses its control over its operating system to pressure third-party developers to comply with Apple’s privacy. Standards.
But the labels, first announced in June, have drawn criticism from app makers who use ads to make money. Advertising support apps may be labeled “data used to track you”, which may encourage users to download the app.
For example, in a blog post last week by Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp, Apple did not fully describe how the privacy label messaging service for its application uses user data.
Labels include the following:
- Data used to track you: Developers can combine user data collected from the app with information from outside the app, such as other apps or websites, often to serve targeted ads or to measure how effective ads are.
- Data linked to you: Developers collect information associated with your device, account, or identity.
- Data not attached to you: Developers claim to collect data, but say that the information it collects will not be linked to your account or device identifier.
- No data collected: Applications that do not collect any information about the user.
- No information available: This label will be assigned to applications that have not been updated since the need arose. But the most popular apps currently being developed are constantly being updated, so Apple has said that privacy labels will be on most apps in the store.
Each application submitted to the App Store must provide information to create these labels
Apple
New labels indicate what kind of user data is being used for, such as location or contact information.
“Apple’s vision is for users to be more vigilant and control their location data,” said Craig Federjee, Apple’s senior vice president of software, who said in a speech last week that some users did not know what they were providing, such as location data for applications and other types of access Allows the iPhone to disable the app through the app.
Apple with its labels Its purpose is to provide users with the information they need to choose which applications to use.
Apple’s own apps will be named under the same criteria as third-party developers. Apple apps that can be downloaded from the App Store will receive labels on their download pages. Other Apple apps built into the phone, such as News, contain the same information as published on Apple’s website.