How App uninstall is being tracked and how to avoid it?

We have seen the news where Uber and some other apps tracking the user even after user delete the app. That’s bit extreme and was easy for Apple, Google to crack down. There are services which identifies if user has uninstalled the app and target those users with ads.

Here is how it works. There is something called silent push notification which allows apps developer to invoke app in the background without user opening the app. This feature allows developers to fix any issues with app or update some data on device. There is small window (few seconds) provided by the OS to perform the activity. Silent push notifications works only when user had allowed push notifications. So some developers / services are sending silent push notifications to the app and if there is no response back from the app, it counts app is deleted by user. Depending on their marketing funnel, they show targeted ads to the user.

These practices are against the Apple and Google policies for silent push notifications and sometime those services may get crack down from giants.

For now, if you don’t want to get tracked for app install / uninstall, simple way to avoid is don’t enable push notification unless it’s really required to use the app / service.