Shostack + Friends Blog

 

Tracking Company Says 96% of iPhone Users Block Tracking

So there's some good news and some bad news in this story: 'Too Bad, Zuck: Just 4% of U.S. iPhone Users Let Apps Track Them After iOS Update'. A child wearing a backpack walks down a snowy city neighborhood street

So there's some good news and some bad news in this story: Too Bad, Zuck: Just 4% of U.S. iPhone Users Let Apps Track Them After iOS Update. The good news is that, given a choice, 96% of Americans don't accept targeted ads. I'm sure that the advertisers will accept that, move on, and not oppose new restrictions on intrusive practices.

But the bad news is... the data comes from a tracking and analytics company, Flurry. (I know nothing about them, and they may be very fine people.) "Flurry based its findings on a sample size of 2.5 million daily mobile active users with iOS 14.5 in the U.S. and a sample size of 5.3 million such users worldwide. According to the company, its analytics tool is installed in more than 1 million mobile applications and it aggregates data from about 2 billion devices per month."

So, umm, if this anti-tracking stuff is working — how does Flurry get that data, and what are they collecting from the 96% of Americans who've opted out of tracking via Apple's Anti-tracking technology?

Photo: Sigmud