Hey 
How does Snowplow handle Apple’s requirements on app tracking transparency? I stumbled across this while browsing around on requirements on mobile app tracking. Apple Developer Documentation
/Brian
Hi Brian,
thanks for raising this interesting question.
The Apple policy around ATT (app tracking transparency) is subject of many debates in these days.
As stated in their page:
You must use the AppTrackingTransparency framework if your app collects data about end users and shares it with other companies for purposes of tracking across apps and web sites.
The most important point is the final user of the data tracked.
The Snowplow pipeline is fully under the customer control so it means that Snowplow or any other can’t access the data unless the customer/developer decides to share the data. If the customer/developer tracks the data for internal purpose without sharing them externally there isn’t any infraction of the ATT, hence it doesn’t need the opt-in of the app user.
The other important problem is the tracking of the IDFA identifier for ad attribution.
The Snowplow iOS tracker and the wide Snowplow infrastructure don’t require IDFA (it’s optional). The tracker sets an internal identifier that is automatically deleted at the app uninstall and it can’t be used for ad attribution and it can’t be used to track the user among other websites of apps.
For these reasons, I think that Snowplow is not affected by the restrictions imposed by Apple for the App Tracking Transparency unless the developer/customer decides to share the data with third party services, which is something outside Snowplow infrastructure control.
4 Likes