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What is Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement?

For Safari Preferences/Privacy/Web advertising: you can check it on or off. On allows privacy-preserving measurement of ad effectiveness.

If you click ? it says: “Let advertisers measure how they’re doing without associating ad activity with you.”

OK, but if you uncheck it, does that now allow advertisers to track you and associate you?

Because, I do not want advertisers to know me or track me!

It is unclear as written.

Again, Apple, please hire some English majors to vet your UI and UX English language (and other languages by French, Polish, Japanese, etc. too) for clarity.


[Re-Titled by Moderator]


Mac mini, macOS 11.6

Posted on Dec 24, 2021 8:39 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 7, 2022 3:10 AM

As a programmer who basically just works with logical assertments all day, I agree that the setting is very vague. I would guess, from the description, that the setting only acts on the privacy-preserving aspect of the action, ie. enable it to be anonymized, disable it to be identifiable, but you're gonna get ads either way. However, from the context of the settings page I could guess that I can uncheck if I don't want to be tracked at all, but that's a big IF and a risk I don't want to take. I rather be tracked and anonymous than risk being tracked and identified. Like you said, the question marks just reiterates the same sentence without clearing it up at all. It's a checkbox that may or may not do one or two things, and I don't know if I should leave it checked or blank. So yeah, this def could be worded alot better, and could use some clearing up.

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Feb 7, 2022 3:10 AM in response to Ataraxy01

As a programmer who basically just works with logical assertments all day, I agree that the setting is very vague. I would guess, from the description, that the setting only acts on the privacy-preserving aspect of the action, ie. enable it to be anonymized, disable it to be identifiable, but you're gonna get ads either way. However, from the context of the settings page I could guess that I can uncheck if I don't want to be tracked at all, but that's a big IF and a risk I don't want to take. I rather be tracked and anonymous than risk being tracked and identified. Like you said, the question marks just reiterates the same sentence without clearing it up at all. It's a checkbox that may or may not do one or two things, and I don't know if I should leave it checked or blank. So yeah, this def could be worded alot better, and could use some clearing up.

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Dec 26, 2021 11:30 AM in response to TrafGib

Exactly but, it is so unclear!

Regardless, with clarity, I would want no tracking and nothing at all as, “They will always find a way around this stuff until there are federal laws preventing it!”

Badly phrased settings like this just make people distrust big tech even more. Apple knows better.

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Dec 24, 2021 9:13 AM in response to Ataraxy01

Hi Ataraxy01,


As I understand it, if you uncheck the option there is no measures or tracking at all.


Clicked on, you are allowing privacy-preserving measures, while clicked off allows no measures at all.


With the setting either on or off, your objective "I do not want advertisers to know me or track me!" is being met. The measure is the effectiveness of the ad itself. I presume whether it was clicked, or not. What the privacy-preserving measure is doing is not letting that click be related to you, track you, etc.

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Dec 26, 2021 1:38 PM in response to Ataraxy01

"Exactly but, it is so unclear!" - Not saying that the wording is perfect in all circumstances, but this particular example seems clear enough, to me. Off = No ad effectiveness measures as all. On = Measures allowed, but with privacy protection.

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What is Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement?

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