Did you know that every Android device has a unique Advertising ID? That’s right. Your phone includes a user-specific, unique, resettable ID for advertising. This ID is provided by Google Play services, and is an anonymous identifier that allows app developers and the Google ad network to recognize your device among the billions of Android devices and then target you with ads. Although you cannot disable this ID, you can opt out of ad personalization, such that your unique Advertising ID isn’t used to help the services to target you.

How do you do that? It’s actually really simple. Let’s opt out. Open up Settings on your Android device. From within Settings, locate and tap Google. In the resulting screen, tap the On/Off slider for Opt out of Ads Personalization. When prompted, tap OK. That’s all there is to it. You have successfully opted out of Ads personalization on Android. Your Advertising ID will no longer be used by apps or the Google Ad network to target advertising for you. Welcome to the new world privacy order.

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From the hottest programming languages to commentary on the Linux OS, get the developer and open source news and tips you need to know. Delivered Tuesdays and Thursdays