Earlier this calendar week , stories emerged that some China - base advertising groups were coming up with their ownclever workaroundsfor the newanti - tracking techthat Apple ’s including with upcoming version of iOS 14 . Now it looks like Apple ’s fighting back .
On Thursday , the Financial Timesreportedthat Apple air off warnings to at least two Chinese apps that were caught essay to produce their own alone identifier for a given app — something that the Apple update pretty explicitly forbids .
The two apps in inquiry were becharm using something called theChina Advertising Association ID(CAID for short ) , which was educate by the region ’s trade association of the same name in former 2020 as a way to keep track and targeting iPhone users long after Apple ’s update went into effect . The Financial Times firstbroke the newsthat some of China ’s biggest tech companies — like Baidu , Tencent , and Bytedance — were each allegedly hightail it tests to put through the identifier . together with , these three digital giant reportedly controlabout 54%of China ’s total advert spend .
Photo: Hector Retamal (Getty Images)
It ’s unclear what the Apple updates will do to the billions of dollar that expend translates into . Here in the U.S. , we know that some major players in the ad - serve market — Facebook , in particular — haveforecastsome sort of significant gross plunge from the iOS update , and have go on apublic Puerto Rico spreeover the preceding few month to defend their core business from Apple ’s hold .
We ’ve writtena bitabout what these updates mean — and why Facebook ’s on the offensive — in the past , but at the most canonical level , the update would but require apps to ask for user consent before using a specific ad identifier ( their so - call IDFA ) , that ’s baked into their phone . Without IDFA access , these app devs do n’t have the ability to cut across exploiter outside their own app , which , as you may imagine , is pretty bad news for the companies that make bank off ofdoing exactly that . While some of them have examine to find their own underhanded ways to deprave the new Apple rules , there are actually somepretty strict guidelinesoutlawing just about all of them : no “ fingerprinting , ” nohashed data , and no creating identifiers of your own .
It release out that ’s what some of these China - base companies were attempting to do . TikTok ’s parent company ByteDance , for object lesson , use an adtech platform calledOcean Engineto vacuum up identifier like a phone ’s IMEI and hardware spectacles , both of which are then used to assign a unique CAID to the earphone . If you look at theprivacy termsfor the CAID , it notes that this identifier is then design to be stored on a server house within the Advertising Association itself , meaning that any app using the Association ’s make - in code could then call back that ID to market to whoever ’s using their picky app .
If that sounds like it ’s a violation of Apple ’s nonindulgent rule of thumb here , that ’s because it perfectly is . But as the initial Financial Times points out , Apple inexplicably had n’t yet cracked down on the CAID , or any apps carry out it up . At least until now — per the Times , one developer who was fascinate sneaking it into their computer code was distinguish that Apple ground their app “ collects user and gadget information to create a alone identifier for the user ’s gadget , ” and were move over two weeks to update their app so it would be “ compliant with the App Store Review Guidelines within 14 days . ”
properly now , it ’s unclear whether the major players in the fluid - app space will flinch . While Gizmodo was n’t capable to confirm whether Tencent or Baidu has shift just yet , as of this writing , Bytedance ’s developer documentsstill listthe CAID as an optional identifier if a user ’s IDFA is unavailable .
We ’ve reach out to Apple for input on its enforcement and will update if we hear back .
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