How to hide your iPhone’s name (and why you should)

IPhones sometimes have trouble keeping secrets; Fortunately, there is something that can be done about it.

What you do on the Internet, the apps you download, and often times, the sites you visit can be linked to what is called your iPhone’s Advertising ID (Android phones have a similar Advertising ID). Besides commercially available databases, This unique alphanumeric string might be enough for third parties to link iPhone actions with the real name of its owner.

An example of the consequences this could have in the real world when the New York Times published an article can be linked to the movements of people participating in the January 6 Uprising in the United States Capitol Building. The newspaper obtained a dataset that linked phone location data to ad IDs, which, along with other available databases, allowed the newspaper to associate this data with real people.

Assuming you play by Apple’s rules, app developers can access a phone’s advertising ID by simply requesting it on the phone itself. Think of an ad ID as the most common web cookies that track you on the internet, remember what you do and share information with websites along the way. Your phone also contains something like a cookie – this is your advertising identifier.

Your phone’s advertising identifier is a traditional digital thumbnail that points directly to you.

If you want privacy when you go, say, to the doctor, church, or AA meeting, this system should worry you. Several apps on your phone that can access your advertising ID track your location. While apps may promise to store this data anonymously, linking it to an ad ID only, the Times article provides an example of how easy it can be to relink these identifiers (and all the data associated with them) to real names.

The paper states: “Many companies offer tools to allow anyone with data to match IDs with other databases.” These databases may contain your name and real address.

How do you block apps from accessing the ad id?

Apple is offering users the option, despite being buried in iPhone settings, to deny apps access to your Advertising ID. Disabling apps’ access to location data is also an important step, but there are other ways apps can estimate your phone’s location, such as Wi-Fi connections. Also, you should never allow apps to access your location data unless they badly need it to work, like Maps.

To deny apps access to your phone’s advertising ID:

• Go to Settings ”
• Click on “Privacy”
• Select “tracker”
• Disable the “Request Activity Tracking” option

Interestingly, the list page does not immediately clarify that this action will have the desired effect. But it is. Clicking “More Information” takes the stranger to a long page of text explaining what’s going on behind the scenes.

When you refuse to allow the app to track you, the app is blocked from accessing your device’s advertising identifier (predefined by setting up ad tracking restriction on your device).