Between Privacy and Profit:

Mobile tracking poses significant risks to user privacy. Mobile advertising identifiers and Software Development Kits (SDKs) play a central role in this process, which is largely determined by the governance of mobile app stores and operating systems-both dominated by Apple and Google. Recently, both companies have made headlines for incorporating privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) into their products that impact mobile tracking. While these initiatives represent a step toward addressing the issue of tracking, they have also faced criticism for raising competition law concerns as they ultimately do not apply to their native services. Their actual impact on compliance with data protection laws, however, has not yet been sufficiently assessed. This article examines the extent to which these PETs comply with the principles of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This article argues that most of the PETs introduced by Apple and Google are 'soft PETs' , i.e. they focus on transparency and leave critical data flows, including those supporting their native tracking ecosystems, largely untouched.