Apple, earlier at its annual developers conference – WWDC 2019 – showed us just how much it cares about users’ privacy. The tech giant unveiled Sign-in with Apple feature at the event, which essentially gives users the ability to login to their accounts using their Apple IDs (just like the Google and Facebook IDs). Apple says it would use FaceID and TouchID technologies on its phones for aunthenticating users’ credentially and that it would not share users’ data with third parties. While Sign-in with Apple was one of the highlights of the company’s annual shindig, it was not the only privacy-focussed feature that the company released.
Apple, as a part of its efforts to empower users to know about their data, more sepcifically how apps use their data, added a new feature on to iOS 13 that would show the iPhone users a map of the places where specific apps tracked them.
According to the screenshots of the feature shared by 9To5 Mac, iOS 13 will show users pop-up reminders that will include a map of the places a specific app tracked users location. This pop-up notification will also the reason why a particular app needs to track your location in the background. For instance, Apple Store – which is one of the app demos that the publication showed – needs to track your background location as it would provide you with “relevant products, features and services depending on where you are”.
In addition to this, the pop-up notification in iOS 13 will also give users the option to the change the location access to ‘Only While Using the App’ or to ‘Always Allow’, giving them the flexibility to restrict location data access to apps. The publication says that there is also a ‘Allow Once’ option, which would give a particular app a one-time access to a user’s location data. They would have to give the app access to their location information again when the specific app is opened.
The feature would essentially keep users apprised of the intances when an app is tracking them. This way, they would be able to pick which apps need selective and which apps need access to location data on a more permanent basis.
Interestingly, while Apple’s tvOS does not support the ‘Always’ option, the company belives that the watchOS does not need the access on a more regular basis. macOS, on the other hand, does not have Always or when in use option, however, iPad apps for Mac can use either always or when in use option.
Discussion about this post