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Cupertino / Berlin (dpa) - Can an app monitor my activities on the internet or not?

In the future, users of an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV will be able to decide this question for themselves.

Apple is the first smartphone vendor to give its customers an easy way to stop tracking their behavior across different apps and websites.

Apple celebrates the new operating system as a victory for data protection.

Online corporations such as Facebook and media companies that are dependent on online advertising, on the other hand, see the free Internet at risk.

In future, iPhone app providers will have to explicitly ask users for permission for comprehensive tracking.

The analysis company App Annie assumes that 90 percent of users will decline.

And that has far-reaching consequences, because non-personalized advertising is significantly less effective than ads that are tailored to the personal interests of the user.

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Facebook has been warning for months that this will mainly affect small and medium-sized companies, which are dependent on personalized advertising on the online network, especially in the corona pandemic.

On Monday, several German associations from the advertising and media industry accused Apple of unfair competition and filed a complaint with the Federal Cartel Office.

Apple emphasizes on the other hand: "We believe that privacy is a basic human right."

The data belonged to the users, "and they should be able to decide for themselves how their data is used and by whom".

You got support from authorities and data protection officers for the function.

The data of the users on the devices have become more and more rich and personal.

The “App Tracking Transparency” (ATT) announced in the summer of 2020 will take effect with the iPhone system version iOS 14.5, which was published on Monday.

At the same time, it was introduced for the current versions of iPadOS for the Apple tablet and tVOS for Apple TV.

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So that app providers can recognize a user to personalize advertising, Apple devices have a special identification number, the IDFA.

In the future, app providers will have to explicitly ask users for permission if they want to access this ID.

Users can also block all tracking requests with a single switch in the settings.

The associations criticize that the group “in fact excludes all competitors from processing commercially relevant data in the Apple ecosystem”.

At the same time, however, Apple is exempting its own services from the planned changes and collecting significant amounts of user data itself.

The Apple manager Erik Neuenschwander, who is responsible for data protection for users, countered: "ATT applies equally to all developers worldwide - and that also includes Apple."

There are also ways of placing advertising more efficiently and measuring its effect without following individual users, emphasized Neuenschwander.

At the same time, app developers can still process data from their own application with the consent of the user.

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In the dispute with the advertising and media industry, Apple has little to lose.

The group also operates a small advertising business for placing the applications in the app store.

But the majority of its income comes from the sale of hardware and services such as iCloud or the commissions from the app store.

The advertising industry is under pressure from Apple's rigid data protection policy.

It is true that there are significantly more users of the Google Android smartphone system worldwide.

However, the owners of an iPhone are considered to be significantly more lucrative for advertisers, as statistically speaking they spend more money and are more likely to try out new products.

With this in mind, Forrester's chief analyst Thomas Husson believes that Apple’s actions will force the advertising industry to reassess their strategies.

"The benefits for the consumer through the disclosure of personal data must be clearly articulated."

Thus, on the one hand, consumers could be protected.

At the same time, Apple could continue to differentiate itself in terms of data protection and at the same time pursue its own business interests.

Meanwhile, Facebook competitor Snapchat welcomed Apple's move.

"We have always been of the opinion that advertising must take into account the privacy of customers," said top manager Jeremi Gorman after presenting the latest quarterly figures.

They are working on ways to make ads efficient even under the new conditions.

Regulators and policymakers are likely to play a major role in the debate.

In the US, influential Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, among others, are very critical of the strength of the tech heavyweights.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210427-99-371947 / 3