Apple Privacy Letter

November 19, 2020
Dr. Jan Rydzak, Ranking Digital Rights, and

on behalf of
Access Now
Amnesty International
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Human Rights Watch
National Hispanic Media Coalition
New America’s Open Technology Institute
Open MIC (Open Media and Information Companies Initiative)
Dear Jan:
We appreciate your support for the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) permission feature
that Apple announced in June 2020 at WWDC. We also share your deep belief in the val-
ues of privacy, security and transparency that inspire it, and we wanted to take time to
share a bit about our approach to helping users make informed choices about their data.
Apple believes that privacy is a fundamental human right. We design our products from
the ground up to protect user privacy and security as a first principle, governed by our
four Privacy Pillars: Data Minimization, On-Device Processing, Transparency and Choice,
and Security. Year after year, we have introduced industry-leading privacy features and
technologies designed to help our users stay in full control of their data and to help them
stay one step ahead of those who seek to maximize access to personal information for
private gain. In addition to ATT, for instance, we are excited to be launching our new app
privacy information section on the App Store next month. We’re proud of the way these
features push the entire industry forward.
We delayed the release of ATT to early next year to give developers the time they indicat-
ed they needed to properly update their systems and data practices, but we remain fully
committed to ATT and to our expansive approach to privacy protections. We developed
ATT for a single reason: because we share your concerns about users being tracked
without their consent and the bundling and reselling of data by advertising networks and
data brokers.
Apple
One Apple Park Way
Cupertino, CA 95014
T 408 996-1010
F 408 996-0275
www.apple.com
Too often, information is collected about you on an app or website owned by one compa-
ny and combined with information collected separately by other companies for targeted
advertisements and advertising measurement. Sometimes your data is even aggregated
and resold by data brokers, which are third parties you neither know nor interact with.
Tracking can be invasive, even creepy, and more often than not it takes place without
meaningful user awareness or consent. What some companies call “personalized experi-
ences” are often veiled attempts to gather as much data as possible about individuals,
build extensive profiles on them, and then monetize those profiles. We are not against
advertising, we simply think tracking should be transparent and under user control, which
will engender user trust that will benefit all.
We pioneered giving users more control over tracking when Safari became the first
browser to block third-party cookies by default as far back as 2005. Since then, in iOS 11
and macOS High Sierra, Safari added Intelligent Tracking Prevention to further limit track-
ing while still enabling websites to function normally. In 2017, as now, companies that
benefitted from the status quo said our privacy-forward approach would “sabotage the
economic model for the Internet." That has not come to pass — in fact, the internet ad-
vertising industry has seen revenue increases every year from 2010 to 2019, including the
years following the release of Intelligent Tracking Prevention. Users simply have greater
control.
Now, we want to bring this same user-focused, privacy-forward approach to the apps
customers use every day. ATT doesn’t ban the reasonable collection of user data for app
functionality or even for advertising. Just as with the other data-access permissions we
have added over many software releases, developers will be able to explain why they
want to track users both before the ATT prompt is shown and in the prompt itself. At that
point, users will have the freedom to make their own choice about whether to proceed.
This privacy innovation empowers consumers — not Apple — by simply making it clear
what their options are, and giving them the information and power to choose.
There are a few more important things to keep in mind about ATT.
Advertising that respects privacy is not only possible, it was the standard until
the growth of the Internet. Some companies that would prefer ATT is never imple-
mented have said that this policy uniquely burdens small businesses by restricting adver-
tising options, but in fact, the current data arms race primarily benefits big businesses
with big data sets. Privacy-focused ad networks were the universal standard in advertis-
ing before the practice of unfettered data collection began over the last decade or so. Our
hope is that increasing user demands for privacy and security, as well as changes like
ATT, will make these privacy-forward advertising standards robust once more.
ATT applies to all developers equally, including Apple, and Apple does not track
its users. Apple has built its ads business with privacy firmly in mind. Apple does not ac-
cess user data from other Apple services like Apple Pay, Maps, Siri, iMessage, and iCloud
to serve ads in the App Store, Apple News, and Stocks. Nor does Apple use data from us
er devices through services and functions such as the Health app, HomeKit, email, con-
tacts, or call history.
Apple’s approach to targeted ads, in fact, demonstrates that privacy-forward advertising

is possible by putting user control at the center. We don’t track our users, and they can
choose to disable ad personalization based on Apple’s first-party data in Settings. They
can also view the information used to deliver ads by selecting View Ad Targeting Infor-
mation. When users have Personalized Ads on, we target ads by grouping together users
who share similar characteristics such as apps downloaded, age, country or city of resi-
dence, and gender into segments, so that a given campaign or set of campaigns can’t
identify a given user. No sensitive data is used to place users in such segments, and ads
are only delivered if more than 5,000 people meet the targeting criteria. Apple does not
access or use the IDFA on a user’s device for any purpose. Apple does not know what ads
an individual user received. Similarly, we have set strict standards with regard to data
brokers and collection of third party data. Apple does not send or receive any data from
third parties to create the segments it uses to target ads. Apple engages in privacy pre-
serving first party advertising and doesn’t append or gather data from third party sources.
We simply do not need or want to gobble up more and more data in order to deliver an
experience that users appreciate.
By contrast, Facebook and others have a very different approach to targeting. Not only do
they allow the grouping of users into smaller segments, they use detailed data about
online browsing activity to target ads. Facebook executives have made clear their intent is
to collect as much data as possible across both first and third party products to develop
and monetize detailed profiles of their users, and this disregard for user privacy continues
to expand to include more of their products.
We share your belief that customers should have control over their data. The ATT permis-
sion is another proof point of our principled dedication to privacy innovations, and is no
different than the other iOS-based permissions that allow a user to control access by a
developer to their photos, contacts, calendar and location. And so, we see the update to
iOS 14 which implements the ATT feature as a natural evolution, providing the same ex
plicit, privacy-forward choices to our users regarding tracking by their apps as we do to
other key features of the device.
We are grateful for your leadership as we look forward to implementing the ATT frame-
work. And we commit to continue to create privacy-forward features across our products
— and to advocate for privacy-forward changes across the technology industry.
Yours Truly,
Jane C. Horvath
Senior Director, Global Privacy
1 “An Open Letter from the Digital Advertising Community,” American Association of Advertising Agencies,
American Advertising Federation, Association of National Advertisers, Data & Marketing Association, Interac-
tive Advertising Bureau, Network Advertising Initiative, September 14,
2017, https://www.iabcanada.com/iabs-reaction-to-apples-launch-of-intelligent-tracking-prevention-on-
safari-fall-2017/
2 “Internet Advertising Revenue Report Full Year 2019 Results & Q1 2020 Revenues,” Interactive Advertising
Bureau, May, 2020 https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/FY19-IAB-Internet-Ad-Revenue-
Report_Final.pdf
3 “Facebook’s game streaming service actually makes sense,” Fast Company, October 26,
2020, https://www.fastcompany.com/90567983/facebooks-game-streaming-service-actually-makes-sense

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November 19, 2020

Dr. Jan Rydzak, Ranking Digital Rights, and

Apple’s approach to targeted ads, in fact, demonstrates that privacy-forward advertising

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