There is no free app that does not track our data and sell it to an advertising circuit, but there is more than one way to prevent tracking. The problem of privacy, tracking user habits, and indiscriminate collection of their data are as old as smartphones and, above all, as apps. Both the Android and iOS ecosystems are teeming with free apps whose only means of monetization is the collection (and subsequent sale to advertising platforms) of the data of those who use them.
In recent years, tracking levels have risen to such high levels, and scandals have erupted so largely that even less privacy-conscious users have realized that the measure is now full. This has resulted in some initiatives, such as Apple’s Tracking Transparency App and DuckDuckGo’s very recent Tracking Protection App, protecting user privacy. But, in the end, the user must put into practice some good practices to defend his data and his rights. Here are some of these practices: they are just the most important, all we should use every day.
Privacy
To protect our passwords and always use new ones for new accounts: if a password is stolen, hackers will immediately try to use it to access the user’s other accounts. If the passwords are all the same, all accounts will fall into the hands of hackers in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, this is the most frequent case because remembering tens (or hundreds) of different passwords by heart is impossible even for the world user with the strongest memory. The solution is: use a good password manager.
The second tip from privacy experts is to use a VPN, especially if we browse using a public WiFi connection. A Virtual Private Network allows us to navigate by masking our real IP address, which in practice prevents our tracking (a fake address, which is not ours, will be tracked). Thanks to the spread of free VPN apps, the use of this technology is growing significantly.
Third tip: do not give unnecessary permissions to the apps we install. Today all apps, both on Android and iOS, must explicitly ask us for permission to access the data on the smartphone, our location, the camera, and the microphone; otherwise, they will not be installed. Most apps, however, ask for permissions that aren’t justified by the service offered – there’s no reason for a game app to request access to photos on your phone or our location. So if he asks us, it’s just to resell that information. Stay away from apps that ask for too many permissions, especially if it’s not clear why they’re asking for them.
Fourth tip: before installing an app, let’s ask ourselves who develops it. In a world where, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, we can’t even trust Facebook, why should we trust an app developed by a Pakistani programmer (or from any other part of the globe, of course) unknown? We learn to look for information about who develops the app before installing it and not download it if the information is not found.
Fifth tip: let’s keep our desire for social media at bay. After citing the Cambridge Analytica case, it should not be necessary to add anything else, but as the ancient Romans: better repeat it, social networks are a gold mine for ” scrapers. ” It is information that would seem innocent and useless, but it is still our name, surname, age, and photo of our face. And, often, much more.
Sixth tip: update the apps, but after updating on the apps. In theory, but unfortunately not always in practice, with each new update of an app, security holes are plugged, and new functions introduced that should protect us from hackers or simply curious. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, with glaring cases of absolutely reliable apps that, out of the blue, become real ” spyware ” after an update. Usually, this happens after a successful app is sold by a small developer to a larger company: the reason for the purchase may be to monetize the app’s fan base.
Seventh advice: do not use the alternative stores, only the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. Let me be clear: even on the two official stores for Android, and unreliable iOS apps abound, but at least there are Google and Apple, which, in the event of a report of strange behavior, proceed to block the app. Unfortunately, not always promptly. On the alternative app stores, however, this control is even weaker if not absent. And many apps that don’t pass the Play Store and App Store preliminary checks are published only in alternative stores.
How To Prevent App Tracking
2021 was an important year for the prevention of tracking user behavior by apps installed on smartphones. In April, Apple released a new pro-privacy feature within iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5: blocking the tracking of the IDFA ( Identifier for Advertising ). With the so-called App Tracking Transparency, the IDFA puts more than a spanner in the works for app developers who track user behavior. In practice, this mainly translates into annoying banners that appear every time an app wants to access user data.
It will be the user who chooses whether to allow it only once, never, or always and it is clear that, in the end, he gets bored and opts to deny the authorization to the app once and for all. With Android 11, released on September 8, Google has done something very similar: when an app tries to access some data, a banner is shown asking for the user’s authorization who can choose: yes, no, only while using the app or never. On November 18, the well-known pro-privacy search engine DuckDuckGo launched App Tracking Protection for Android.
A function included within its DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser (which, however, acts at the operating system level for all apps), which does pretty much the same thing as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency. That is, block the advertising trackers included in the apps. But it does it differently than Apple’s solution: while App Tracking Transparency is a kind of VPN, which “teases” trackers by hiding the real IP address, DuckDuckGo’s App Tracking Protection does not let the traffic of the user from an external server, but acts directly inside the smartphone, recognizes the trackers and blocks them.