Cannot remove App Privacy after removing AdMob and tracking

Annoying. Same here. Seems a bug took 7 month to have someone look at. Is user privacy focusing still Apple's top strategy?

It's 1/27/2022 and I am still facing the exact same issue, and all I got is the same canned answer. How much time people (developers, reviewers, supports, appeal board, ...) have to waste before the Apple store fixes this?

I'm having this same issue after explaining it to the reviewer. I'm not sure what to do at this point. It's a crucial update.

I just wanted to get on here and say I'm presently facing the exact same issue. I've spelled out the problem as simply and clearly as I can. I've even referenced this thread in my appeal.... We'll see.

I ran into this issue today, May 31, 2022. Previously, my app used AdMob to show ads, so I had answered all the tracking questions and implemented the ATT permission request. But then I decided to remove AdMob. The new update had absolutely no tracking, but as others have mentioned, I could not update the app's privacy information to indicate it did not track. My update was rejected. However, I replied to the App Review team in App Store Connect and explained the situation. I got impatient after three hours with no reply to my message from App Review, so I filed an appeal explaining the same as in my previous message. I immediately got a reply from App Review saying that my app would be approved shortly. It was approved minutes later and I released it. I was then able to update the app's privacy information to say "No, we do not collect data from this app". I don't know if it was my initial reply to App Review or the appeal I made three hours later that got it approved. Either way, I think I would say that right now the process for this situation is:

1. Submit your update removing all tracking,
2. Get rejected,
3. Appeal the rejection explaining your app no longer tracks,
4. Then update the privacy information after getting approved and releasing.

I am another one with the same issue here. :(

I am having the exact same issue. It has been about a month since I first clicked submit for review. :( I took numerous tries to get this resolved but review board's reply was that I need to remove NSLocalNetworkUsageDescription keyword from my info.plist file. lol

Long story short, build settings was holding on to the NSUserTrackingUsageDescription although I removed it from the info.plist file. Everything else seems to get synced up correctly. so I opened the project.pbxproj file and removed the following lines.

INFOPLIST_KEY_NSUserTrackingUsageDescription = "This identifier will be used to show ads that you may be interested.";

When I upload the new build and submitted it for review, it let me update the App Privacy. I am crossing my fingers. 🤞

we have several apps with this issue, since they share the same internal engine, form which we recently removed any tracking of user data tracking.

we ran into two different problems:

already published app, to be upgraded: same as everyone has described above.

newly created app: we decided to remove user data tracking in the middle of review process, because the reviewer was complaining about the tracking permission request message, and we know by experience that these kind of situations will be hopeless, since they never explain precisely which is the problem with the message. so we uploaded a new build without user data tracking, deleted any trace of tracking in the Privacy Info section, but still the reviewer said that we are using tracking. What is totally amusing about this is that he stated the folowing: "The app privacy information you provided in App Store Connect indicates you collect data in order to track the user, including .", and NO, we did not break up the sentence, it really ends with a space and a dot!

So it's August 2023 and the problem still persist, in a more funny way!

I face exactly to the same error. Just *** Apple ! By respect of dev please consider this bug who is wasting so much time during more 2 years !

2023-10-20, Same here, I removed all the ads SDKs and NSUserTrackingUsageDescription from plist, but the review team kept reply that change which I can not change in connect.

I just submit a app appeal, hope to solve this loop

Same problem, March 2024.

I decided to remove Unity Ads and Analytics but the submission is rejected because "Apps need to receive the user’s permission through the AppTrackingTransparency framework". Recommended action is to "update your app privacy information in App Store Connect". Cannot update the app privacy because of this: "Your app contains NSUserTrackingUsageDescription" (the new version does not).

It's a shame this vicious circle still exists after 2 years despite developers asking to remove it.

March 2024 +1

It is now 2024 and we are still experiencing this issue, here is my experience and resolution process, I hope this helps someone in need.

We removed the IDFA in the new app version, however were unable to change the privacy setting to not tracking in AppStoreConnect. we chose to leave it as it is for now and attempted to submit it for review, unsurprisingly the reviewer asked the same question as the OP, so we submitted the following response:

Hello, in this app version we removed everything related to AppTrackingTransparency including NSUserTrackingDescription. However, we can not update the app privacy information to "Not tracking users" in AppStoreConnect since it's related to the current app binary on the AppStore, not the one we are trying to update. Please approve this then we will be able to update the privacy information later.

The reviewer understood the issue and passed this review. However, we are still unable to change the settings in AppStoreConnect. When I change the privacy, an implicit error occurred, if I select Not tracking, the setting doesn't take effect and the page doesn't change.

We then submitted this issue to Apple Support and the support team said it had been referred to the appropriate department. After another week of waiting they replied that my issue had been fixed and I was finally able to edit my privacy settings properly.