Apple sends ad spend reports to the wrong developers

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App Store
Did your Search Ads Basic report reach someone else?
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple appears to have sent ad spend and install reports to the wrong app developers. A number of people have reported the mistake on social media, but it’s not clear exactly how many developers are affected.

Developers who use the Search Ads Basic program get a monthly report detailing how much they’ve spent on ads and how many installs they achieved as a result. Apple offers $100 credit to those who sign up for the program, which can be started and stopped at any time.

That’s not my report!

A number of those reports ended up in the hands of the wrong developers today. Several people noted on Twitter that they had received emails — containing ad spend and install details — for apps they had no association with.

This isn’t the first time app developers have suffered a similar hiccup. Two years ago, some developers were greeted with someone else’s account after using their own credentials to sign into the iTunes Connect platform.

Today’s issue doesn’t have much of an impact on those who incorrectly received these reports. But the developers whose apps were listed in them will certainly be upset that their confidential ad spend and install figures were distributed to other people.

“It isn’t clear just how many are being affected by the email glitch — or why — but the incidents are numerous enough for the problem to be visible on Twitter,” notes TechCrunch“By extension of that, the issue could expose the private data belonging to a sizable number of businesses and developers whose use Apple’s App Store ad products.”

Apple is yet to acknowledge the problem.

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