Apple may be tracking you through App Store even when privacy settings are turned off, report

Apple has long advertised itself as a better privacy alternative for smartphone users, but new research questions that claim

Apple may be collecting data about its iPhone users even when the settings on the device indicate that tracking has been turned off completely, according to a new research.

Apple makes big claims about how their smartphone ecosystem is the only one in the world that puts consumers' privacy first by providing them with the opportunity to entirely turn off tracking.

However, the findings of the new study present a totally different picture.

The study was carried by two iOS developers, Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry, who work at the Mysk software firm and routinely post their research findings on the Mysk blog and on Twitter.

The researchers say they used a jailbroken iPhone running iOS 14.6 to decrypt and examine network traffic between the device and its manufacturer.

They double-checked their work using a standard iPhone running iOS 16, the newest operating system.

The researchers say they examined several iPhone apps, including the App Store, Apple TV, Apple Music, Stocks and Books and found that analytics control and other privacy settings had no visible impact on Apple's ability to collect data. No difference was seen in the tracking regardless of whether iPhone Analytics was switched on or off.

"The level of detail is shocking for a company like Apple," Mysk told Gizmodo.

The App Store, for instance, seems to collect data on almost everything users do in real time, including what they tapped on, which apps they search for, what ads they see, how long they spend looking at a particular app, and how they discovered it.

Additionally, App Store sent information on the users' devices, including their ID numbers, screen resolutions, internet connection types, keyboard languages, and—notably—the sort of data that is often used for device fingerprinting.

"Opting-out or switching the personalization options off did not reduce the amount of detailed analytics that the app was sending," Mysk said.

"I switched all the possible options off, namely personalized ads, personalized recommendations, and sharing usage data and analytics."

Other applications, including Apple Music, Apple TV, the iTunes Store, Books, and Stocks, also exchanged information about user activity.

According to the researchers, the most of the apps that sent analytics data used consistent IDs, which would enable Apple to monitor users' activities across all of its services.

Regardless of whether the iPhone Analytics option was turned on or off, the Health and Wallet apps didn't send any analytics information at all.

What makes Apple's data collection particularly surprising is that company has long advertised itself as a better privacy alternative. However, it appears that Apple doesn't think its tracking practises actually come under user tracking.

As pointed out by Gizmodo, Apple claims that its "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."

In other words, Apple's tracking isn't tracking because Apple alone gathers that data and doesn't share it with third parties - which sounds like a very Apple-friendly interpretation of tracking.