Disable Ad Tracking on your Phone
Let’s make it an easy one today.
What am I suggesting and why?
Turn off the advertising ID on your mobile devices.
Basically, when you have multiple apps installed on your phone, the apps can talk to each other about who you are and what you do based on a profile they create of you attached to an ID that’s unique to you. They all work together to compile this profile by picking up bits of information from each other.
In terms of your privacy, this means that what you do, view, and interact with on one app is given to another app, and you probably didn’t know they were even doing it.
Duration: 5 minutes
Ease: Very Easy
Cost: $0
You in? Let’s go!
This one’s pretty easy. Find your device below and follow the instructions!
Android
On Android 12 and up, you should be able to delete your ad ID permanently, and prevents apps from accessing it in the future.
- Open Settings.
- Tap Privacy.
- Tap Ads (it’s near the bottom on mine).
- Tap Delete advertising ID.
- Tap the button Delete advertising ID on the next screen.
iPhone / iPad
iOS is a little better about this, they require apps to ask permission before tracking across apps at least. But if you’re tired of saying no, or if you’ve accidentally said yes, let’s fix you up.
- Open Settings.
- Tap Privacy & Security.
- Tap Tracking (near the top).
- Turn off the toggle next to Allow Apps to Request to Track (it should be grayed out, not green). This prevents future apps from asking for permission and just denies them all outright.
- Turn off any toggles next to apps that may have already been granted permission below (they should all be grayed out, not green).
Take it one step further, and block Apple from tracking you too.
- Go back to Privacy & Security.
- Tap Apple Advertising (near the bottom).
- Turn off the toggle next to Personalized Ads (it should be grayed out, not green).
Dig Deeper
There’s a lot to dig into with this. Data is bought and sold all day every day. This ad ID links all the individual datasets to each other and to you, specifically. This ID is specific to your devices, meaning if this ID shows up in different datasets, the ad brokers can link them back together.
This ID is also linked to your device, which means the data it’s collecting could include everywhere that you travel, spend time, who you’re with, where you live, and on and on and on.
There are claims that this ID is anonymized, but think about it. If someone knows all those things about you, how anonymous is it really?
Now, this isn’t a catch-all as far as ad trackers are concerned, but it’s a really important step to take to eliminate a LOT of what IS being tracked about you.
I highly recommend checking out this article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to dig even deeper into how this all works if you’re interested, and while you’re there, check out some of their work.
