France Hits Apple With $162 Million Fine for App-Tracking Transparency Issues
France's competition authority Monday fined Apple 150 million euros ($162 million) for abusing its dominant position in the market for mobile app distribution in iOS and iPadOS devices.
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The case concerns Apple's implementation of its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) system from April 2021 through July 2023. The authority's investigation found that while the objective of the ATT system isn't improper, the way it's implemented "is neither necessary for nor proportionate with Apple's stated objective of protecting personal data."
The ATT system results in the display of multiple consent pop-ups, which makes using third-party applications in the iOS environment overly complex, the authority said. In addition, it found that rules governing the interaction between different pop-up windows undermined the system's neutrality, causing "definite economic harm" to app publishers and advertising service providers.
In fact, the authority said, Apple's implementation of ATT penalized smaller publishers in particular since, unlike the main vertically integrated platforms, they depend to a large extent on third-party data collection to finance their business.
The regulator also found that ATT is unnecessary because the consent obtained isn't valid under applicable laws, including the French Data Protection Act.
The case is an example of its cooperation with French privacy watchdog CNIL, the competition authority said. CNIL provided opinions on various questions relating to the applicability of privacy law raised by the case, which the competition authority considered in its analysis, it said.
CNIL's opinion showed that bringing the ATT pop-up into compliance with competition law wouldn't have caused Apple to downgrade the effectiveness of its privacy protection system, the authority wrote.
It added that making publishers systematically collect user consent twice for the same purpose creates artifical and unnecessary complexity when the ATT system could easily, subject to a few modifications, also collect the consents that French law and the General Data Protection Regulation require.
In addition to the fine, Apple must publish the decision summary on its website for seven consecutive days.