How to block ad tracking on your iPhone

In 2019, an article in The Washington post by Geoffrey Fowler described the author’s shock when he found out how many of his iPhone apps collected and downloaded information about his use while he slept.

As we all know by now, data is a huge commodity these days. If you use a phone, laptop, or any type of computing device (unless you’re a security expert or high-end hacker with access to sophisticated blocking tools), you pay for your apps by contributing marketing and other information to the companies providing it.

As Fowler’s article shows, iPhone users are not immune to this. Since the publication of his article, Apple has made commendable changes to its privacy policies. But it’s always a good idea to take charge of your own data. There are easy ways to minimize the amount of tracking application vendors can perform and the amount of data they can access.

Turn off personalized and location-based ads

According to Apple’s Advertising and Privacy page:

Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, which means it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising purposes or advertising metrics, and does not share user or device data with data brokers. .

However, the page goes on to say that contextual data, such as information about your device, its location, your searches in the App Store, and what you read on Apple News may be collected. You can work around this problem somewhat by disabling personalized and location-based advertising.

To turn off personalized ads

• Select your “Settings” app, tap “Privacy”, scroll down and select “Apple Advertising” (it will be at the bottom of the list).
• Disable “Personalized announcements”.

To deactivate geolocated ads

• Select “Settings”> “Privacy”> “Location services” (at the top of the screen).
• Turn off “Location services”.

On this page, you can also edit several of your apps, such as App Store or Maps, to never allow location access, ask next time or when using the app. Also note that you can still use the “Find my phone” function; it will temporarily activate location services.

If you want to see how protected your phone is, you can try taking the Panopticlick test, offered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Among other things, it monitors device fingerprints. I ran it on an Apple iPhone 11 after following the instructions above, and got a “partial protection” result to block tracking ads, block invisible trackers, and protect against fingerprints.

Lock Safari

If you are using the Safari browser on your iPhone, there are several things you can do to make it more secure.

• Go to settings. “
• Select “Safari” and scroll down to the “Privacy and Security” section.
• Turn on “Prevent Cross-Site Tracking” (which means advertisers and other third-party content providers cannot track you from site to site).
• Activate “Block all cookies”. The cookies collected by various websites can contain a lot of information about how you use the site, the information you put there, etc. By blocking cookies, you prevent the collection of this data.

However, you are probably going to make things very inconvenient for yourself. Your visits to the sites will not be recorded. For example, you might not be able to review a playlist or repurchase the same T-shirt you bought last year. Some sites will even refuse entry if you don’t allow them to collect cookies. It’s up to you.

Disable background app refresh

According to Apple, the reason Background App Refresh is enabled is to allow suspended apps (apps that are not currently active) to “check for updates and new content.” According to Disconnect, the privacy apps company Geoffrey Fowler cites in his article, it also allows apps to collect marketable tracking data and transmit that data even when you’re not using the app. Interestingly, iPhones come with Background App Refresh turned on, but it’s not that hard to turn off.

• Go to settings. “
• Select “General”.
• Select “Background application refresh”.
• You’ll see a list of all the apps that use this feature, and they’ll all be enabled. Find “Background app refresh” at the top of the page and tap it.
• You will be taken to a page that allows you to turn it on for Wi-Fi and cellular data, for Wi-Fi only, or you can turn it off completely. Select “Off”.
• If you go back to the previous page, you will see that all the toggles for the different apps are completely gone.

You might want to be selective about which apps can run in the background. Otherwise, some applications may not work properly. For example, Google Photos won’t automatically back up your Camera Roll until this feature is turned on. You can therefore, if you wish, leave “Background app refresh” enabled, and then choose the specific apps you want to disable.

Update, March 8, 2021, 5:00 p.m. ET: This article was originally published on May 30, 2018; several parts have been updated to reflect the changes in iOS.