[imagesource: Getty]

When Apple announced the rollout of its iOS 14 update, Facebook lost it.

After Apple made it clear that it would be ramping up its privacy with updates to the new operating system in the coming months, Facebook filed court papers.

The system prompts users to give apps permission to track their activity across other apps and the web, which is posing a serious threat to Facebook’s $86 billion in annual revenue brought in by targeted advertising.

The social network has waged a months-long campaign against Apple, running full-page ads in national newspapers and testing pop-ups in the app to encourage users to accept tracking.

As I’ve said before, if Facebook is running scared, Apple must be doing something right.

While we can rely on Apple to help us out on our mission not to be constantly tracked and mined for our data, it can’t account for absolutely everything.

As The Verge puts it, it’s still a good idea to take charge of your own data.

We’re all adults here.

So, if ad tracking is still finding its way into your life, despite the assistance of iOS 14, Apple has put things in place so that you can do something about it.

Turn off personalised and location-based ads

As per Apple’s Advertising & Privacy page:

Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, and does not share user or device data with data brokers.

The page does say, however, that data such as info about your device, its location, and your App Store searches could be collected.

You can sort this out by turning off ‘personalised ads’:

• Select your “Settings” app, tap on “Privacy,” and scroll down to and select “Apple Advertising” (it will be near the bottom of the list).
• Toggle “Personalised Ads” off.

Turn off location-based ads

• Select “Settings” > “Privacy” > “Location Services” (at the top of the display).
• Toggle off “Location Services.”

Fortifying Safari

If you use the browser on your phone, here’s how to make it safer.

• Go to “Settings.”
• Select “Safari,” and scroll down to the “Privacy & Security” section.
• Turn on “Prevent Cross-Site Tracking” (which means advertisers and other third-party content providers can’t track you from one site to another).
• Turn on “Block All Cookies.” The cookies collected by various websites can contain a great deal of information about how you use the site, what info you put into it, etc. By blocking cookies, you prevent that data from being collected.

There are a few more examples of how to up the safety level on your iPhone, which you can read about here.

If you’re keen to test out just how effective your efforts to secure your phone have been, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has something called a Panopticlick test which will alert you to the level of privacy on your device.

[source:verge]