Let’s start with a little game. In iOS, there’s an ad tracking feature that allows advertisers to identify you (albeit anonymously). It’s turned on by default. Let’s see if we can work out how to turn it off together. Go into your settings and scroll down. There we go! Ad tracking must be in “Privacy”, right?
Oh. That’s strange, ad tracking isn’t in the privacy menu – so let’s keep looking. Let’s go back to the main settings page and go into “General”.
“General” is a crappy name for a menu item. It’s basically a bucket of miscellaneous stuff that they didn’t know what to do with. If we tap it, this is what we see:The first item inside “General” is labelled “About”. Do you think Ad Tracking is in there? It’s a bit of a long shot, but let’s take a look:
Yawn – nothing to see here! But wait, what’s this at the very bottom? Advertising. Well I never – let’s tap it and see. We’ve found it! Even better, it says “Limit ad tracking off”. So ad tracking is off already. I’m not being tracked, thank goodness. But wait a minute. It doesn’t say “Ad tracking – off” it says “Limit ad tracking – off”. So it’s a double negative. It’s not being limited, so when this switch is off, ad tracking is actually on.
Off means on! This is actually a great example of what I define as a Dark Pattern. It’s a user interface that uses manipulative techniques to get users to do things they would not otherwise have done.
