Your iPhone may have contacted data brokers 1,000s of times in one hour despite every privacy setting telling apps not to track you. That’s the stark finding from Raxxis, a testing firm that compared an iPhone against Unplugged’s UP Phone using identical configurations—same 33 apps, Apple’s “Ask App Not to Track” enabled for everything.
The UP Phone? Zero tracking connections. Complete radio silence to data harvesters.
This isn’t about Apple building bad software. It’s about discovering that your privacy controls only govern Apple’s behavior, not the shadowy ecosystem of third-party app components that treat your opt-outs like suggestions rather than commands.
How Apps Bypass Your Privacy Choices
Third-party software development kits sidestep iOS restrictions entirely.
The culprit hiding in plain sight: software development kits (SDKs) embedded within apps. These code libraries—think of them as apps within apps—communicate with data brokers regardless of your iPhone’s privacy settings. While you’re carefully toggling “Ask App Not to Track” for each app, these SDKs transmit location data, usage patterns, and device identifiers to advertising networks.
According to Unplugged CEO Joe Weil, the test transmitted 210,000 data packets in that single hour. Your morning coffee shop location, evening gym check-in, weekend shopping patterns—all packaged and sold while your iPhone’s privacy dashboard shows green checkmarks everywhere.
Interestingly, a Samsung device tested under identical conditions made roughly half as many tracking calls. The difference? American iPhone users represent premium advertising targets, making your device a more valuable data source than Android alternatives.
The Real Privacy Alternative
UP Phone’s firewall approach blocks tracking at the network level.
The UP Phone takes a fundamentally different approach—treating privacy like airport security rather than an honor system. Its built-in firewall identifies and blocks connections to known data harvesting servers before apps can phone home with your information.
While Apple promises privacy through policy, Unplugged enforces it through infrastructure. The company’s “third platform” philosophy—neither Apple nor Google—recognizes that real privacy requires hardware-software integration designed around user control rather than advertiser accommodation.
For iPhone users who genuinely believed their privacy settings provided protection, these results land like discovering your Ring doorbell has been livestreaming to strangers. The question isn’t whether Apple lied—it’s whether privacy settings were always designed as theater when billion-dollar advertising ecosystems depend on data access.
Your move, iPhone loyalists.
