Apple was hit by a fine of 150 million euros ($162 million) by the French competition watchdog on implementing the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy framework.
Autorité de La Concurrence said it was imposing financial penalties on Apple for abusing its dominant position as a distributor of mobile applications on iOS and iPados devices from April 26, 2021 to July 25, 2023.
Introduced by iPhone manufacturers for iOS 14.5, iPados 14.5, and TVOS 14.5, ATT is a framework that requires mobile apps to ask for the user’s explicit consent to access a device’s unique ad identifier (i.e., an advertiser or IDFA identifier), tracking across targeted ad apps and websites.
“Unless you receive permission from the user to enable tracking, all ad identifier values for your device will be zero and you may not be able to track them,” Apple says on its website. “You can display the AppTrackingTransparency prompt every time you select, but the device’s ad identifier value is returned only if the prompt is presented and the user has given permission.”
In addition to requesting permission to track users, app developers are also required to cite the purpose behind why such tracking is necessary in the first place.
“The purpose of tracking app transparency (“ATT”) framework is core-free, but how ATT is implemented is neither necessary nor compared to Apple’s stated purpose of protecting personal data.”
Describing ATT as “artificially complex,” the regulator said the consent obtained through the framework does not meet the required legal obligations under French data protection laws and requires developers to use their own consent collection solutions. This will lead to users being shown multiple consent popups.
The car also called for two types of asymmetry in its implementation. One of them relates to the fact that tracking consent needs to be verified twice by the user, but rejection is a one-step process. This is the aspect of undermining “framework neutrality.”
“Publishers had to obtain double consent from users to track them on third-party sites and applications, but Apple did not ask users of their own applications for consent (up to the iOS 15 implementation).” “Because of this asymmetry, CNIL has fined Apple for infringing section 82 of the French Data Protection Act, which transposes the Eprivesy directive.”
“As long as Apple introduced a single ‘personalized ads’ pop-up to collect user consent for its own data collection, today’s asymmetry remains, but it continues to require dual consent for third-party data collection by publishers. ”
It is noteworthy that ordering does not impose any particular changes to the framework. According to Reuters, it “is up to the company to make sure it complies with the ruling now.” The fine was Apple’s Chump Change, which earned a net profit of $36.3 billion in revenue for the quarter ending December 28, 2024.
In a statement shared with The Associated Press, Cupertino said the ATT prompt is consistent for all developers, including itself, and said it has received “strong support” for features worldwide from consumers, privacy advocates and data protection authorities.
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