Earlier this week, stories surfaced that some China-based ad groups came up with their own ideas smart solutions for the new anti-tracking technology that Apple is also doing with upcoming versions of iOS 14. Now it seems that Apple is fighting back.
The Financial Times is on Thursday reported that Apple sent warnings to at least two Chinese apps caught creating their own unique identifiers for a particular app – something the Apple update pretty explicitly bans.
The two apps in question have been caught using something called the ID of China Advertising Association (CAID for short), developed by the region trade association of the same name in late 2020 as a way to keep tracking and targeting iPhone users long after Apple’s updates took effect. First the Financial Times broke the news that some of China’s largest technology companies – such as Baidu, Tencent and Bytedance – were each reportedly running tests to implement the identifier. Collectively, these three would reportedly be digital giants check about 54% of China total ad spend.
It’s unclear what the Apple updates will do with the billions of dollars spent in it. Here in the U.S.we know that some major players in the ad serving market – notably Facebook – have done this prediction kind of a significant sales increase from the iOS update, and have gone on one public PR spree in recent months to defend their core business against the clutches of Apple.
We have written a little about what these updates entail (and why Facebook is offensive) in the past, but at the most basic level, for the update apps should just ask for the user consent before using a specific advertising ID (their so-called IDFA), which is baked into their phone. Without IDFA access, these app developers don’t have the option to track users outside of their own app, which, as you can imagine, is pretty bad news for the companies that bank from do exactly thatWhile some of them have tried to find their own sneaky ways to undermine the new Apple rules, there are actually a number pretty strict guidelines almost all of them forbid: no “fingerprints, “No. hashed data, and you don’t need to create your own identifiers.
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As it turns out, some of these China-based companies tried to do just that. For example, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance uses an adtech platform called Ocean Engine to extract identifying information such as a phone’s IMEI and hardware specifications, both of which are used to assign a unique CAID to the phone. If you look at the Privacy and Terms for the CAID, it notes that this ID is then designed to be stored on a server hosted by the Advertising Association itself, meaning that any app using the Association’s built-in code can then call that ID back to whoever use their specific app.
If that sounds like it violates Apple’s strict guidelines, it’s because it absolutely is. But like the first Financial Times points out that Apple inexplicably hadn’t yet done so cracked on the CAID, or apps that implement itSo far – according to the Times, a developer caught sneaking into their code was told that Apple discovered that their app “collects user and device information to create a unique identifier for the user’s device.” , and were given two weeks to update their app so that it “meets App Store review guidelines” within 14 days.
At this point, it is unclear whether the major mobile app players will recoil. While Gizmodo was unable to confirm whether Tencent or Baidu has moved yet, Bytedance’s developer documents at the time of writing still list the CAID as an optional identifier if a user’s IDFA is not available.
We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on its enforcement and will update when we hear back.