France eyes antitrust action against Apple

The French Competition Authority is likely to move forward soon with an antitrust investigation into Apple over complaints tied to 2021 changes to its app tracking policies, Axios reports Tuesday.

Sara Fischer and Maria Curi for Axios:

A formal investigation would mark the first major government move taken globally against Apple related to privacy rule changes that upended the digital advertising world.

The 2020 complaint argues that Apple’s app tracking changes did not adequately adhere to European Union privacy rules and that Apple failed to hold itself to the same ad targeting standards that it forced on its competitors because it targeted iOS users with ads from app tracking data.

The complaint was filed jointly by four French advertising trade groups —IAB France, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), SRI and UDECAM.

MacDailyNews Take: Last June, Germany’s Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) said it was also looking into Apple’s App Tracking Transparency privacy rules for third-party apps to see whether they give the U.S. tech giant preferential treatment.

As we wrote at the time: “Apple does not track users across third-party apps and websites, selling user tracking data to other companies, which is why Apple apps do not display the App Tracking Transparency prompt to obtain the users’ permission to allow the collection of end user data and the sharing of it with other companies for purposes of tracking across apps and web sites.”

Apple employs on-device intelligence and other features to minimize the data that the company collects in Apple’s apps, browsers, and online services, and the company does not create a single comprehensive user data profile across all of our apps and services.

More info: https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/A_Day_in_the_Life_of_Your_Data.pdf

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