It's more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules

If Apple doesn't enforce the rules around privacy and tracking, are they really rules? When you ‘Ask app not to track,’ some iPhone apps keep snooping anyway

Apple made a big splash about their privacy advocacy, and their rules about blocking tracking via the iPhone. There is just a small problem. If you tell apps not to track you, some apps just ignore that request and track you anyway.

But something curious happens after you ask not to be tracked, according to an investigation by researchers at privacy software maker Lockdown and The Washington Post. Subway Surfers starts sending an outside ad company called Chartboost 29 very specific data points about your iPhone, including your Internet address, your free storage, your current volume level (to 3 decimal points) and even your battery level (to 15 decimal points). It’s the kind of unique data that could be used by advertisers to identify your iPhone, possibly letting them know what other apps you use or how to target you.

In other words, it’s sidestepping your request to be left alone. You can’t stop it. And your privacy is worse off for it.

So apparently Apple doesn't see fingerprinting as tracking. Even though everyone else in the universe does. What is the other choice? That they don't care, or that they are flat out lying about privacy?

Click thru for the rest of the info. How Apple was made aware of the tracking going on in some cases, and have done nothing, even though weeks have gone by. They could block the offending apps from their app-store in short order, if they cared.

So is Apple's advertising just that? Is it empty words? (Hat tip to Input Magazine.)

The title to this post is a misquote from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.