Apple: How to Opt-Out of Interest based iAds

[kjk]

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4228

Apple and its partners use cookies and other technologies in mobile advertising services to control the number of times you see a given ad, deliver ads that relate to your interests, and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. If you do not want to receive ads with this level of relevance on your mobile device, you can opt out by accessing the following link on your iOS 4 mobile device: http://oo.apple.com. The message "You have successfully opted out" will appear and you will be automatically opted out of interest-based ads.

Make sure you are using a mobile device running iOS 4 or later. If you receive an "Opt out not successful" message, please wait a few hours and try again.

A few things you should know:

You may still see the same number of ads as before, but they may be less relevant because they will not be based on your interests.
You may still see ads related to the content in an application or based on other non-personal information.
If you use more than one Apple mobile device running iOS 4, you will have to opt out from each device individually.
Opting out applies only to Apple advertising services and does not affect interest-based advertising from other advertising networks.

To be clear, you can't avoid the ads You just opt out of the personalization of ads, similar to Google's http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

[kjk]

More privacy issues, this time concerning real-time location:
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/21/...ng-of-devices/

To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.

You have some control over sharing location data with 3rd party apps in Settings..but it isn't clear if that stops Apple from using the data themselves.

[Bremen Cole]

I keep location services off on iPhone and iPad unless I am actually using them. It saves battery life and I would rather Apple or whoever not even be tempted to know where I am....

[HarryT]

If I have to see ads, I'd at least prefer to have them relevant to my interests and location. I've always been impessed by how accurately Amazon, for example, suggest things that they think will interest me - more often than not, they do.

[scottjl]

the nice thing about being jailbroken, is you can mess around with your host file. very easy way to block ads in apps. hmm. this link used to work, don't know if it's down for good or not. but it was a nice host file full of advertisers that were redirected to 127.0.0.1 to stop your phone from grabbing ads from the net.

if anyone wants a copy of the file i can look into posting it up.