French competition watchdog fines Apple $162.4 million over App Tracking Transparency
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency
France’s competition authority imposed a 150 million euro ($162.4 million) fine on Apple, citing concerns that the company exploited its dominant position in the mobile app market through privacy restrictions placed on developers within the iPhone and iPad operating systems. On Monday, the regulator acknowledged that the intent behind Apple’s App Tracking Transparency system—introduced in 2021 to require developers to seek user consent for tracking activity across apps—is not inherently problematic. However, it criticized the implementation, arguing that Apple’s approach is “neither essential nor balanced” in achieving its stated goal of safeguarding personal data.
Edith Hancock for The Wall Street Journal:
The regulator said that Apple’s services don’t face the same restrictions and that its policy penalizes smaller publishers because they depend on collecting third-party data to finance their business.
An Apple spokesperson said that the system gives users more control of their privacy by mandating that developers issue a prompt to ask permission to track data, adding that it has received strong support for the feature from consumers, privacy advocates and data protection authorities.
“While we are disappointed with today’s decision, the French Competition Authority has not required any specific changes to ATT,” they said.
The penalty could provoke more tension with the U.S. ahead of new tariffs going into effect this week. U.S. President Trump has openly criticized the European Union for fining companies like Apple for antitrust infringements, saying they amount to a taxation on successful American technology groups.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple is not favoring its own interests here.
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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