App Store rejects apps with external SDKs for collecting data without permission

Apple has started refusing apps in the App Store that use third-party SDKs to collect user data without permission. With this, Apple is anticipating the advent of allowing tracking in iOS.

Analyst Eric Seufert reports on Twitter that Apple has started to deny app updates that use the so-called Adjust SDK. This is an SDK that makes it possible to track users via device fingerprinting, which includes elements such as the IP address.

Seufert explained to 9to5Mac that Adjust SDK does not give users an option to prevent tracking and that the service also gives developers alternatives to continue tracking once Apple has introduced the tracking opt-out feature to users.

Apple calls this App Tracking Transparency, and this feature of allowing apps to be allowed to perform tracking should be available sometime this spring when iOS 14.5 comes out. The feature comes in addition to the “privacy labels” that are already available. Asking for permission should have been in iOS at the beginning of this year, but that was also not achieved, just like an earlier schedule.

It is already possible to ask apps to opt out of tracking via the iOS settings, but apps did not have to ask for permission to turn on tracking. Apps use tracking to build a profile of people by combining data from all kinds of apps, so that more targeted advertisements are possible.