Google’s new policy makes it difficult for apps to track Android users

Google makes difficult to track Android users advertising ID
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Google is revising its privacy policies, which makes it more difficult to track Android users. With Android 12, it is quite clear that the company has been prioritizing user privacy over everything else—although maybe not as much as Apple. Now, if users choose to opt out of receiving personalized adverts, developers will no longer have access to their advertising ID. Let’s learn more about the updated advertising ID policy to track users’ web activity from Google.

Google advertising ID to track user data:

Google allows users to enable the ads-personalization option, which shows relevant ads based on their web activity and personal information. But, even if you opt-out of it, applications continue to gather and utilize your data.

However, according to a new blog post shared by Google, if users withdraw from personalized ads, their advertiser identifier (ID) will no longer be available. This makes it far more difficult to track users between apps and websites and use that information to offer adverts. Ultimately, apps cannot, in a way, have a taste of your data now.

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What is Advertising ID?

Advertising ID is a unique string (a data type in programming) of user-resettable characters provided by Google Play services. In essence, it is a roll number assigned to each device. Companies, apps use this ID to anonymously track user activity on Android devices.

Following the change, if a user disables personalized adverts, Google will no longer issue an advertising ID to the specific device. As a result, if apps/data companies attempt to access the identifier, it will only return a string of zeros. These changes, interestingly, came after Apple restructured how advertising IDs work on iOS.

What’s next for advertisers?

Google has been the market leader in the world of advertising for over a decade. Likewise, ads account for around 80% of the company’s revenue. As a result, it must also keep advertisers pleased. In order to do so, the tech giant will explore alternate routes.

Implementation

Google will begin implementing the new policy in late 2021 and will expand to include applications running on Google Play-enabled devices in early 2022.

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