Apple and Google are both currently being scrutinized by four lawmakers about advertising tracking IDs.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the lawmakers have requested for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate into the “harmful practices” of the two companies involving the alleged collection and selling of personal data.
The four lawmakers make up of Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.), and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D., Calif.). Together, they requested to have the two tech giants investigated for allegedly “knowingly facilitating” this harmful practice. The lawmakers claim that the two do this “by building advertising-specific tracking IDs into their mobile operating systems.”
Part of the letter reads:
“It is often possible to easily identify a particular consumer in a dataset of ‘anonymous’ location records by looking to see where they sleep at night.”
To be fair, Apple and Google have been working hard at giving their users more options for privacy. Last year, Apple launched App Tracking Transparency when it rolled out iOS 14.5. Google is said to be working on a new privacy restriction for Android devices too.
In its request, both of these actions are acknowledged by the lawmakers. But they pointed out that Apple tracking IDs have been on by default until recently. It was also hard for customers to look for the opt-out option. Not to mention, Google continues to enable tracking by default. And its opt-out option wasn’t introduced until the matter was brought up.
Google has denied the allegation and says that it doesn’t sell user data. They also prohibit developers from doing such actions. Advertising IDs were created so users have more control while developers can privately monetize their apps.
Right now, there is no word on whether the FTC will follow the request and conduct an investigation.
Source: PhoneArena
