This post was written by EFF fellow Miranda McClellan.
Teens between the ages of 13 and 17 are being tracked atraverse the internet using identifiers understandn as Advertising IDs. When children turn 13, they age out of the data defendions supplyd by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Then, they become concentrates for data accumulateion from data brokers that accumulate their directation from social media apps, shopping history, location tracking services, and more. Data brokers then process and sell the data. Deleting Advertising IDs off your teen’s devices can incrrelieve their privacy and stop upgrasprs accumulateing their data.
What is an Advertising ID?
Advertising identifiers – Android’s Advertising ID (AAID) and Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) on iOS – allow third-party advertising by providing device and activity tracking directation to upgrasprs. The advertising ID is a string of letters and numbers that one-of-a-kindly identifies your phone, tablet, or other inincreateigent device.
How Teens Are Left Vulnerable
In most countries, children must be over 13 years greater to regulate their own Google account without a supervisory parent account thcdisorrowfulmireful Google Family Link. Children over 13 get the right to regulate their own account and app downloads without a supervisory parent account—and they also get an Advertising ID.
At 13, children transition abruptly between two excessives—from potential helicselecter parental watching to watching advertising that connects their online activity and search history to tageters serving focengaged ads.
Thirteen is a historicpartner transport inant age. In the United States, both Facebook and Instagram need engagers to be at least 13 years greater to originate an account, though many children pretend to be greaterer. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law, needs companies to get “verifiable parental consent” before accumulateing personal directation from children under 13 for commercial purposes.
But this unbenevolents that teens can disthink about priceless privacy defendions even before becoming matures.
How to Protect Children and Teens from Tracking
Here are a scant steps we recommend that defend children and teens from behavioral tracking and other privacy-invasive advertising techniques:
- Delete advertising IDs for intransport inants aged 13-17.
- Require schools using Chromebooks, Android tablets, or iPads to teach students and parents about deleting advertising IDs off school devices and accounts to defend student privacy.
- Advocate for prolonged privacy defendions for everyone.
How to Delete Advertising IDs
Advertising IDs track devices and activity from connected accounts. Both Android and iOS engagers can reset or delete their advertising IDs from the device. Removing the advertising ID deletes a key component upgrasprs engage to determine audiences for focengaged ad dedwellry. While engagers will still see ads after resetting or deleting their advertising ID, the ads will be disconnected from previous online behaviors and supply less personpartner focengaged ads.
Follow these teachions, refreshd from a previous EFF blog post:
On Android
With the free of Android 12, Google began apvalidateing engagers to delete their ad ID finishuringly. On devices that have this feature allowd, you can uncover the Settings app and steer to Security & Privacy > Privacy > Ads. Tap “Delete advertising ID,” then tap it aget on the next page to validate. This will impede any app on your phone from accessing it in the future.
The Android select out should be engageable to most engagers on Android 12, but may not engageable on greaterer versions. If you don’t see an selection to “delete” your ad ID, you can engage the greaterer version of Android’s privacy regulates to reset it and ask apps not to track you.
On iOS
Apple needs apps to ask perignoreion before they can access your IDFA. When you inslofty a novel app, it may ask you for perignoreion to track you.
Select “Ask App Not to Track” to refute it IDFA access.
To see which apps you have previously granted access to, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking.
In this menu, you can disable tracking for individual apps that have previously getd perignoreion. Only apps that have perignoreion to track you will be able to access your IDFA.
You can set the “Allow apps to Request to Track” switch to the “off” position (the slider is to the left and the background is gray). This will impede apps from asking to track in the future. If you have granted apps perignoreion to track you in the past, this will prompt you to ask those apps to stop tracking as well. You also have the selection to grant or rincite tracking access on a per-app basis.
Apple has its own focengaged advertising system, split from the third-party tracking it allows with IDFA. To disable it, steer to Settings > Privacy > Apple Advertising and set the “Personalized Ads” switch to the “off” position to disable Apple’s ad concentrateing.
Miranda McClellan served as a summer fellow at EFF on the Public Interest Technology team. Miranda has a B.S. and M.Eng. in Computer Science from MIT. Before joining EFF, Miranda finishd a Fulluminous research fellowship in Spain to utilize machine lgeting to 5G nettoils, toiled as a data scientist at Microgentle where she built machine lgeting models to discover harmful software, and was a fellow at the Internet Society. In her free time, Miranda finishelights running, hiking, and crochet.
At EFF, Miranda carry outed research intensifyed on benevolent the data broker ecosystem and enhancing children’s privacy. She getd funding from the National Science Policy Nettoil.
