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I got below mail from play store. so we are using firebase sdk for analytics in our app. Could you guys help we need to fill the below form.

New Advertising ID declaration form coming to Console

Starting July, you'll need to tell us in Play Console if your app uses an advertising identifier. This will let us provide helpful feedback if your release is at risk of having an advertising identifier zeroed out. You will not be able to create releases targeting Android 13 until you complete the advertising ID declaration form.

As a reminder, apps that target API level 33 (Android 13) or later and use advertising ID must include the normal permission com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID in their Android Manifest.xml. This will prevent your advertising identifier from zeroing out. If you do not declare the permission in your manifest file, or if you use an SDK that omits the permission from their library manifest, this may impact your advertising and analytics use cases.

Frank van Puffelen
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Partha
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3 Answers3

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I had the same question so I contacted Firebase Support and they replied that Google Analytics for Firebase uses Advertising ID by default. More info: https://support.google.com/firebase/answer/6318039?hl=en

Angelhia de Fiesta
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  • So is it ok to remove the AD_ID permission or firebase will fail to work properly then? – 3c71 Aug 16 '23 at 07:44
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The answer to ask someone else is not helpful at all. Especially when you don't have a "digital analytics team" or a "marketing team" as a single app developer. The question is whether Firebase uses the AD_ID internally to track visitors or not, not whom to ask.

Ok then. I did some research and and I found that Firebase is not using the AD_ID at all. Also in the codebase of the Firebase plugins I was not able to find the AD_ID string somewhere - just for the iOS implementations. So I guess (let's say about 90 %) you can fill the declaration form by saying "no, I am not using the AD_ID", when you are only using Firebase and no other tracking / advertising plugins.

Another information: Google will not remove your app, if you do a mistake here. So if your app actually uses the AD_ID and you don't know it, the worst case which would happen then is that they are filling the AD_ID with zeros, means you would get in trouble "only" with tracking or analyzing your visitors/customers.

Daniel
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    give a little more time for your research will you? Set android target at least 31 and watch how your firebase analytics will include in your merged manifest permission com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID – Simon Sot Dec 09 '22 at 09:19
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Most likely yes, but it depends on the exact firebase libraries your using.

My app doesn't use ads, but I do the following firebase libraries.

implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-core:21.1.0'
implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-analytics-ktx:21.1.0'
implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-crashlytics:18.2.12'

This answer states that

You may not be including this permission explicitly in your AndroidManifest.xml but it could still be present in your final merged manifest after the build is done, contributed by one of the dependencies you have on your project.

I checked my app's merged manifest file and the com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID was included in the final manifest.

Lifes
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