#ad-tracking

#ad-tracking

Whenever I hear about consumer data tracking, my half-century-old brain dredges up that Hall and Oates hit called "Private Eyes" with the refrain "they're watching you." I don't mean to incite Big Brother paranoia; I know I'm not being spied on everywhere I go, especially not in the seclusion of my home. But while using streaming devices, you can almost guarantee that your entertainment and advertisement preferences are being tracked.

At the top of many people's privacy concerns is what data is being gathered about them as they browse the web. That information creates a profile of a person's interests that is used by a variety of companies to target ads. Windows 11 does this with the use of an advertising ID. The ID doesn't just gather information about you when you browse the web, but also when you use Windows 11 apps.

When Apple dropped App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompts in iOS 14.5 back in 2021, it was a watershed moment for user privacy within third-party applications. Nothing like it had existed prior. The initiative gave iPhone users control over whether their in-app data could be aggregated and shared with third parties for advertising or other various purposes. Still, today, I often find comments online from people who don't really know what it does and find the wording very taboo.

The ads on my phone were getting too personal. I could look up headphones once and then see them everywhere, from YouTube to random free games. Even after I stopped shopping, the same product continued to follow me. It became a steady reminder that my activity might be linked across apps, and I could not ignore it. I opened my privacy settings to see what I could change.