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APPLE’S tight rules against apps that track you might not be working as well as we all thought.
The tech giant introduced tough restrictions last year that hit the likes of Facebook and Google hard.
It meant that any app you install on iPhone must ask permission to track your activity on other apps – mainly used for targeted advertising.
They also had to provide so-called “Privacy Nutrition Labels” stating upfront on the App Store what sort of data they suck up.
But experts claim there are loopholes that the big guns can exploit which actually “reinforces” their power.
This is includes using IP addresses and the sign-in feature provided within apps.
“Our findings suggest that tracking companies, especially larger ones with access to large troves of first party, still track users behind the scenes,” researchers from the University of Oxford warned.
“Despite being potentially able to increase transparency and enhance consumer choice, the Privacy Nutrition Labels on iOS are sometimes inaccurate, and can thus be misleading and create a false sense of security for consumers.
“As long as the labels stay inaccurate, they mainly seem to serve the advertising and marketing strategy of Apple around privacy.”
Of the apps studied, a fifth claimed they would not collect any data from users.
But researchers say that many were not telling the truth.
Eight in ten of them were found to contain at least one tracker library.
Despite all this, they believe Apple’s new policies “live largely up to its promises in making tracking more difficult” overall.
Apple was contacted by The Sun for comment.
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