Only time will tell if they stand by their word.

My phone decided to do an update to iOS 14.6 last night. Honestly, I never manually do these things and I guess last night was the night my phone picked to get up to date. Unfortunately, when it did this, it also decided to turn off my alarm. Luckily I only woke up 30 minutes late, but it's safe to say that it's been a Monday.

That being said, I noticed something when opening my usual apps as I got the day started. All of them seemed to display the same message prompt. It basically said this...

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My first thought was, "of course I don't want you tracking me." And then I realized that these apps have probably been doing this for along time, but they are now being required to "ask for permission." I put that last part in quotations because I think it's just a formality and all about optics.

Let me explain.

This prompt is asking if the application you are using at the moment can track your activity when you're using other apps on your phone. They essentially want to know what you are doing on those other apps so they can bring you better, higher quality, laser-like-targeted advertisements. Yep, they want to stalk you so that the next time you open their app, they can show you how else you can spend your hard earned money.

Sounds familiar?

If you're like me, you feel like this has already been going on. Have you ever searched for let's say a new watch on Google, only to open Facebook the next day and be bombarded with ads for watches? It gets even freakier when you don't search for a watch and only mention it to a friend in conversation, but you still end up with watch ads.

It's totally Big Brother and because we already feel like we're being tracked, it feels like a big slap in the face to have these applications "ask for permission." There I go with the air quotes again. They're basically acting first and asking for permission later.

After selecting "Ask App Not to Track" I didn't feel any better than I did before. There's no trust that has been gained with this update because I don't believe that they will make any real changes. It just feels like a way for them to cover their behinds in case of any legal action. Am I the only one who feels this way?

And yet, I still use the apps, so perhaps I'm the real problem here.

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