Well, it’s happening. I just posted on Forbes:
Apple is rejecting updates to apps that conflict with its new privacy policies in iOS 14, signaling that it is now getting serious about privacy enforcement. And, likely, that iOS 14.5 is close to being released, since that’s the version of iOS 14 in which Apple will require apps that want to track users to display the App Tracking Transparency prompt and get user permission.
“Our app just got rejected by Apple’s app reviewer, blaming the MMP SDK for building a fingerprint ID,” says Aude Boscher, a growth marketing product manager at Heetch, a French transportation startup, in an industry Slack channel. “I saw other people complaining … so it might soon come up for you as well!”
This is a big deal, and there’s no guarantee it’s just one mobile measurement provider that’s impacted.
Apple Rejecting Apps With Fingerprinting Enabled As iOS 14 Privacy Enforcement Starts via @forbes https://t.co/EPbtBOVEAX
— John Koetsier (@johnkoetsier) April 1, 2021
This could impact up to 50,000 apps, but if it’s multiple mobile marketing analytics companies impacted … it could easily be in the hundreds of thousands.
Stay tuned for more. And … don’t fingerprint your mobile users 😊