If you’re worried about privacy, delete these 5 smartphone apps right now

Just a few days ago, we told you about a new Apple ad released as part of its “Privacy. That’s iPhone.” ad campaign. In this particular spot, which you can watch below, viewers follow a man going about his daily routine, and in each “scene” he’s using a common app that facilitates everything from a coffee shop order to hailing a taxi ride. As the ad progresses, a growing number of people (who represent creepy, privacy-flouting apps) squeeze in beside and around him, creeping on him, and spying on what he’s doing. Until, one by one, the protagonist of the ad uses Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature to erase all of them from existence, Thanos finger-snap style.

This time next week, the same concepts should get at least some degree of attention during WWDC 2021, when Apple executives and especially CEO Tim Cook are likely to tout the myriad privacy-related benefits of the iPhone as well as the rest of Apple's ecosystem. This has all, of course, been front and center in recent weeks because of the cold war between Apple and Facebook that's gone somewhat hot, with Apple now clamping down on Facebook's business model (at least among iPhone users, which sits within the walled garden the Apple controls) that involves the social network tracking user behavior in order to serve up highly targeted ads.

With Apple recently introducing a new ad unit of its own to the company's proprietary App Store, and coming roughly in tandem with the Facebook crackdown, at least one observer has described what Apple did here as having "robbed the mob's bank." Still, the iPhone maker's moves here leave something to be desired among the hardest core of privacy advocates, such as the fact that the App Tracking Transparency feature is turned off by default. And when it comes to iPhone app privacy, too, there are still plenty of unfortunate realities herein that are a bit outside of Apple's control.