Previously on the PrivacyChoice Blog, I was critical of Apple’s implementation of Do Not Track in iOS 6.0, which stands as a striking exercise in hide-the-ball product design. Literally, finding and exercising your choice about being tracked by advertisers requires a sequence of six interactions with your device:
Tap > Tap > Tap > Swipe down > Tap > Tap
Not to mention knowing that this setting doesn’t live anywhere near the “Privacy” tab; rather, it lives deep at the bottom of “About” under the label “Advertising.” This is the opposite of Privacy By Design.
Rather than putting their attention to fixing this mess, Apple’s privacy team has been working hard on an essential upgrade in iOS 6.1 and here it is — now you have the ability not just to turn off tracking, but now you can reset your “Advertising Identifier.” It’s like deleting your cookies, but not filtering new ones. (Hold your applause.)
As any faithful reader knows, I’m all for choice — who knows, maybe some people do want to reset their Advertising Identifier, maybe because they accidentally used an unsavory app with unsavory ads. So thanks for the additional choice. But c’mon, this is not a serious effort to enable people with choices about their data. If it were, the opt-out choice (and the reset choice, too) would actually be findable.
Personally, I’m filing this new feature with the $29 adapter for an iPhone 5; another example of the kind of cynicism toward us as users that may ultimately be Apple’s undoing.
