Every Apple Has Its Thorns

The average user may not have noticed some changes to Apple's UDID, but with iOS 5 the company has closed off a valuable source of information for independent mobile ad networks. "A lot of people are scrambling to find alternatives," says Giancarlo Maniaci, the CEO of TapIt. "The UDID allowed people to track what apps a user had installed and give our clients a sense of how well their campaigns were working. Now Apple is the only one who can offer that."

On the location-based advertising side there were similar complaints. Eli Portnoy, who runs the ThinkNear—a service that helps merchants optimize their flow of customers by serving up location based mobile ads and deals—took note of it on his blog: "“So let me get this straight: mobile publishers on iOS are not allowed to pull location to serve more targeted ads. However, Apple owned iAds is allowed to pull location just to serve ads targeted to a customers location regardless of what the publisher says. To add salt to injury, this feature is turned on by default and buried in the menu system not under ‘Location Services,’ but under ‘System Services,’” Mr. Portnoy wrote. “The FTC really needs to crack down on Apple’s anti-competitive practices.”

It's Apple's prerogative to decide what user data from apps on their platform gets shared with third parties. "It's always been a tug of war in terms of Apple passing any type of user data to ad networks," said Devin Radford, a senior manager at Amobee. "The data on a user's location is very valuable, because the whole point of mobile is to deliver these highly targeted ads."

Location, says Tom Limongello, VP of Marketing at Crisp, is a value-added service in mobile advertising: "It's fair for ad networks to bitch, but they can't argue with Apple for wanting a competitive advantage."

Already some advertisers are considering a switch away from Apple. "If we can't get at the most valuable inventory on iOS, then we'll be moving more into Android and mobile web," TapIt's Mr. Maniaci concluded.

They're watching you

No publication has led the charge against tracking users on the web harder than the Wall Street Journal. In their series, "What They Know," reporters like Julia Angwin laid out the next generation of super-cookies and digital fingerprinting schemes. Much of it was fascinating, although as I wrote before, it sometimes bordered on fear mongering, positioning basic web architecture like cookies as some nefarious plot.

It's nice to see Ms. Angwin isn't afraid to cover her own bosses when they make similar moves. As she reported last night:

The Wall Street Journal revised its website privacy policy on Tuesday to allow the site to connect personally identifiable information with Web browsing data without user consent.

Previously, the Journal’s privacy policy stated that it would obtain “express affirmative consent” to combine personal data with “click stream information” culled from the website.

But she's hardly her usual self. The post is not part of the "What They Know" series, nor, as Daily Intel points out, does it use terms like "snooping," "prying eyes" or "arms race", to describe the changes, which include a move to track mobile device IDs.

The WSJ positioned this as a move to align their privacy policy across their network of site and of course, "better meet the needs of our users." While it's possible that this kind of tracking will allow the company to offer more personalized news to readers, it is undoubtedly aimed at advertisers, who care most about being able to target certain users and follow them from site to site.

sean power

Betabeat is back with another edition of modern justice. Back in March we brought you the story of Mark Bao, the serial entrepreneur who tracked his laptop thief and released humiliating videos of the culprit doing the rubber band dance on Youtube.

Last night a live drama played out on Twitter, as Sean Power, a tech author and consultant, used the free software program called Prey to track his stolen laptop, which had been taken along with a birth certificate,  health card, cell phone and cash.

Power was in Canada on business, but watched remotely as the thief took a photo and uploaded it to Flickr. That helped Power figure out a name and location, Oficina Latina in Nolita. Twitter followers watching powers tweet about the drama figured out the culprit was actually a part owner in the establishment.

Power tried to sick the cops on the crook, but they refused to respond without him filing an official report, which he couldn't very do from Ontario. Several online watchers offered to help, but Power begged them not to. "Please please please don't get directly involved. I don't want any of you to get hurt for a stupid laptop."

Now a Twitter follower was staking out the bar and the story had broken on several blogs, although the alleged thief was still blissfully unaware. Power continued to share photos of the alleged thief that he was taking with the laptop camera and posting on the website Imgur. In an ironic role reversal, Power was able to watch as someone logged into his Chase bank account on the stolen computer.

By this point the dramatic narrative had jumped the shark for some followers, who began to tweet that Powers was probably part of viral stunt to promote the Prey anti-theft software. While friends jumped in to defend his honor a twitter user named Nick Reese and a mysterious hero known only as the girl in the purple sarong confronted the villian, who gave the laptop up without a fight.

A freelance writer named Brandon Ballenger captured the entire real time drama through a very creative use of the Storify platform, a tool for quickly creating journalism based on social media streams. Powers was so happy to have his property back he actually reached out to the various journalistic outlets that covered the episode and asked them to remove any identifying information. "Paolo freely gave it up. I'm not about to accuse anyone of anything. I'd rather forget that that place exists and just move on."

Chris Dixon had an interesting take on this, pointing out that Eric Schmidt, before stepping down as CEO of Google, made the case for the evolution of an autonomous search engine.

Schmidt said that while the Google Instant predictive search technology helps shave an average of 2 seconds off users’ queries, the next step is “autonomous search.” This means Google will conduct searches for users without them having to manually conduct searches. As an example, Schmidt said he could be walking down the streets of San Francisco and receive information about the places around him on his mobile phone without having to click any buttons. “Think of it as a serendipity engine,” Schmidt said. “Think of it as a new way of thinking about traditional text search where you don’t even have to type.” - via eWeek

Location would be a key element in this kind of predictive search. Knowing when a user is at home versus at work would help Google to understand if they should be serving up information about local deals or the rush hour commute. When serious weather or a big sporting event is happening in the near vicinity, Google would prep searches on this for quick and easy access.

Foursquare's recently shifted its focus to a similar, forward looking model. “We have to look at the future tense; that’s a big opportunity,” Crowley told the crowd at the Where 2.0 conference last week. “How do you tell people where they should be going?” Like the continuous tracking on smartphone, Foursquare is exploring ways to enable automatic check ins for users.

Research scientists envision a future in which this data allows them to peer into the character of cell phone users. ""We can measure their daily exposure to political opinions," project scientist Anmol Madan at MIT's Media Lab, told The Wall Street Journal. "Maybe one day, you would be able to download a phone app to measure how much Republican or Democratic exposure you are getting and, depending on what side you're on, give you a warning."

The Wall Street Journal called attention to the fact that Apple does indeed transmit GPS coordinates  of iPhone users and nearby Wi-Fi networks back to itself every 12 hours. This data is used to build a map of hotspots so that geo-location apps can do a better job pinpointing users the next time they enable these services.

It is worth pointing out again, that the file found by O'Reilley researchers on Wednesday isn't the smoking gun here. Apple sent a letter to Congress a year ago in which it discussed the location database it was building. At the time they noted users can opt out of this and that all the data is anonymousness.

The more detailed log of location being stored on each individual iPhone is not being sent back to Apple, or at least no one has found any evidence of this so far. The concern is that the information could be used as evidence in a criminal case or divorce court now that its public knowledge it has been tracking users every move.

Of course, Apple is not alone in wanting to create this kind of database. Google does it too. As Robert Vamosi, author of When Gadgets Betrays Us, points out, most phones add longitude and latitude data to image when you snap a photo. Upload that to a social network, and a savvy sleuth can come along and take and deduce location based on metadata attached to that photo.