Just a few hours ago, the Financial Times assured that Google would implement a major change in its privacy practices. A few hours later, the internet giant has confirmed that it will indeed allow Android phone owners to disable Advertising ID , a widely used tool for tracking and targeted ads. This is a similar change to the one Apple recently applied on iOS with App Tracking Transparency.
Currently Android users can opt out of receiving personalized ads. While this setting frees them – in part – from targeted advertising, developers can still access the advertising ID . That is, a unique string of characters that identifies the device and is used to execute various analysis and strategies related to ads
As part of the Google Play services update, the Android Advertising ID will be automatically disabled when a user opts out of receiving personalized ads . Google mentions that when a developer tries to access the identifier, if the user decided to disable it, they will receive “a string of zeros” instead of the actual values.
The main difference between the change driven by Google and Apple's ATT is that in iOS 14.5 or later, when an application is opened for the first time, users have the ability to “Ask the application not to crawl” or “Allow”. In the case of Android, that pop-up window will not exist, that is, it will not be possible to deactivate the advertising ID in a specific app, but the changes will impact all equally .
Android privacy changes will come gradually
Asif Islam / Shutterstock.com Google ensures that changes to the advertising ID settings will impact devices running Android 12 from the end of 2021 . Also, they will expand to other devices that support Google Play in early 2022.
The Android advertising identifier is also used for non-commercial purposes such as fraud prevention. In that sense, Google assures that “it will provide an alternative solution to provide essential support use cases” in July.
The announced measures respond to the growing concern about users' personal data. Google said earlier this year that it will stop supporting third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. Regarding its mobile system, Android 12 is expected to focus heavily on privacy.
