Any tricks/apps to disable ads or tracking in apps

[bp1000]

Im pretty sure the answer is no

However, I'm still keen to find out. On my mac I run Adblock and flash block purely to cut down on exposure to adverts which I'm not interested in and never click on. Thats the 1st purpose, the 2nd, a nice bi product is blocking such elements improves battery performance.

Today I read an article that suggested up to 80% of the battery power consumed by an app is related to the data it transmits back to the app developers about app usage, stats and as well as the ads served within the app.

This commission of usage is quite startling, I am however mindful that if it were possible to block these ads and data communication through an app or proxy it would reduce revenue for the hard work put into app design. I pay for apps I like, that isn't the issue for me, efficiency is and I don't like knowing an app is consuming so much of my resources outside of its intended function.

I assume currently, it isn't possible to control app data submission and ad blocking?

 

[dZp]

It is possible if you jailbreak your iDevice and use Firewall IP.
It works in a similar fashion as Little Snitch does on the Mac.

 

[Arelunde]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

If you don't allow push and deny location services, it may cut down in the feedback for ads. However, not having ad streamers running on my iDevices (knowing they are transmitting data all the while) is the primary reason I'm willing to pay for nearly all my apps, even if they are also available for free.

 

[fullojellybeans]

I believe in settings>location services> system services you can turn off location based iAd advertisements and other things that use tracking.

 

[forrie]

If you have the technical know-how, you could set up a transparent proxy with ipfw and squid so that all port 80 (or whatever) on your LAN@Home get filtered -- then you would need a list of the IPs that the iAds and such are delivered or pulled from. I think there is something for jailbroken phones called iAdKiller -- with some automated updating.

I'm considering this, but it's just something I will "get around to" one of these days

Anyone else got other tricks for this?

 

[Arelunde]

I believe in settings>location services> system services you can turn off location based iAd advertisements and other things that use tracking.

Yes. This is good advice ... I have Location Services "On" but turned off for all apps other than Find My iPhone. I can turn on the GPS for any specific app temporarily right on that screen - if it's needed. Nice toggle switches for each.