Security News > 2021 > June > Google to Let Android Users Opt-Out to Stop Ads From Tracking Them

Google is tightening its privacy practices that could make it harder for apps on Android phones and tablets to track users who have opted out of receiving personalized interest-based ads.

The Google Advertising ID, analogous to Apple's IDFA, is a unique device identifier that can be used by app developers to track users as they move between apps to target ads better and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

While Google already allows Android users to limit ad tracking and even manually reset the Advertising IDs as and when necessary, the identifiers are still put to use for non-advertising but essential use cases such as analytics and fraud detection.

The announcement also comes a little over a month after Apple turned the switch on App Tracking Transparency in late April, a new privacy framework that requires users to opt in before apps can begin tracking them across other apps and websites using the device's advertising identifier.

Google's proposed solution differs from ATT implementation-wise in that, unlike the latter, users won't see an opt-in prompt for each app, nor will they have granular controls over each individual app's ability to access their IDFA. Instead, it will let users pull entirely out of all tracking, for all apps.

The opt-out is set to be available as an update to Google Play Services for Android 12 devices, before gradually expanding to all other apps running on devices that support Google Play in early 2022.

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