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To keep advertisers from tracking your kids’ phones

October 17, 2012 By Anne Leave a Comment

A lot of people find targeted advertising creepy – and just plain wrong if targeted at kids, especially little ones. Well, if your kids have iPhones and they have the latest operating-system software, iOS 6, then you can help them turn off apps’ ability to “learn” their interests and target ads at them. Apple calls the setting “Limit Ad Tracking.” My ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid explains how to do that here at Forbes.com. Though not found under Privacy in iPhone Settings and therefore not very intuitive, Larry points out, it is easy, once you know where to go.

Under “Learn More” (about ad tracking), Apple explains that phones that have iOS 6 have an Advertising Identifier associated with them. What’s tracked, if users don’t “Limit Ad Tracking,” is the activity on the phone, not the user personally. That’s pretty personal, but it doesn’t “follow” the user to a new phone, for example. That’s what Apple means when it says the Identifier is “non-permanent” and “non-personal.” Apple says that, “if you choose to limit ad tracking, apps are not permitted to use the Advertising Identifier to serve you targeted ads.” With a temporary caveat: The system’s not entirely in place yet, it indicates in the next sentence: “In the future all apps will be required to use the Advertising Identifier…. Until then you may still receive targeted ads.” Kind of like the workarounds some marketers find to the FTC’s “Do Not Call” list, only hopefully temporary. [Here’s a spring 2011 PC World piece about how tracking works on Android phones (with a little less detail, it tells you how to change the settings too – hope till up-to-date).]

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Filed Under: apps, geolocation, Literacy & Citizenship, mobile, Risk & Safety, Social Media Tagged With: ads, advertising, Android, Apple, apps, iOS 6, iPhone, marketing, tracking

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Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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