Your iPhone Has an Ad-Tracking Kill Switch. Here's Where to Find It

App Tracking Transparency controls whether apps can use a device’s advertising identifier to track behavior across other apps and websites. Turning it on does not make a user invisible, but it cuts off a major pipeline connecting phones to the advertising ecosystem. iPhone users can allow or deny tracking per app. If a user opts out, the app cannot access identifiers that link the device to activity, which are commonly shared with advertisers to create targeted ads. Without explicit permission, apps cannot use data for targeted advertising, including sharing location data, the advertising ID, or other identifiers with advertisers or third parties. The feature was introduced in 2020 and rolled out with iOS 14.5, and later iOS updates added additional privacy controls and protections.

"App Tracking Transparency is introduced specifically to give you control over whether apps can use your device's advertising identifier to track behavior across other apps and websites. Turning it on doesn't make you invisible, but it does cut off one of the primary pipelines between your phone and the advertising ecosystem built around it."

"Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature gives Apple users a simple choice: to allow apps to track their activity or not. If you choose to opt out, Apple will prevent the app from accessing identifiers that link your device with your activity on an app, usually shared with advertisers to create targeted ads."

"Unless you give an app explicit permission to track you (including apps made by Apple), it can't use your data for targeted ads, including sharing your location data, advertising ID or any other identifiers with advertisers or third parties."

"The feature was first unveiled at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in 2020 and was subsequently rolled out to users later that year in iOS 14.5. Since then, Apple has built on these efforts to increase transparency and privacy, adding more controls in iOS 17 and continuing to add anti-tracking features with each new iteration of the OS."

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