Apple has always regarded privacy as a human right, and the company has never liked the idea of ​​advertising on its platform. But as the App Store adds new ad slots, some have raised concerns that Apple's policies may change. And now, some developers are finding that the change seems to be coming, and Apple may track everything a user clicks while browsing the App Store.
Two developers and security researchers calling themselves Mysk have raised privacy concerns about the App Store getting more ads and revealed that iOS sends Apple a detailed log of how users interact with the App Store.
As you can see from the image below, Mysk says the data includes details about where the user taps on the screen, and this information is sent to Apple in real-time via a JSON file. Mysk also said that Apple has been tracking user behavior in the App Store since iOS 14.6, which was released in May 2021.
According to Mysk, Apple introduced the App Tracking Transparency feature in iOS 14.5, which requires apps to obtain user consent before tracking user privacy. But in the next version, iOS 14.6, Apple introduced the ability to track what users clicked on for the App Store.
Apple officials have not yet explained how the data is used, but Apple is indeed increasing the advertising content of the App Store. In August, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that Apple hopes to nearly triple its current ad revenue in the future to at least $10 billion a year.