Apple accused France of not following its own privacy rules

For years, Apple has earned a reputation for being possibly the only major technology company with one semi-decent set of privacy practices. But a new complaint against the company alleges that some of Apple’s latest moves are less about privacy and more about gaining support from its competitors, a claim that Apple quickly rejected.

This is according to the French pressure group France Digitale, which He told Bloomberg which filed a complaint with the country’s data authority – the Commission National de l’informatique et des libertés (or CNIL), on the advertising business run by Apple. According to the pressure group, that drives the interests of startups and venture capitalists, despite the Cupertino giant’s recent tenure requiring third-party developers obtain user consent before tracking and targeting, Apple-specific ad serving systems do this by default, without the need for consent.

An Apple spokesman told Bloomberg in a statement that France Digitale’s allegations were being made they are “obviously false” and are practically reduced to “a bad attempt by those who track users to distract themselves from their own actions.”

While specific advertising may not be something we think of when we hear the word “Apple,” the company does, in fact, have its own targeted ad settings through people’s iPhones and iPads. These ads are specifically published in the A.p Sbroke, in Apple News, or, strange as it may be, within Apple dedicated application Actions.

Per Apple’s own privacy policies, running ads on these different services requires some “contextual information” about your Apple account, such as the type of device, the language in which you set up your device, or your mobile carrier.

Apple’s own ad-specific business isn’t talked about much, not even Apple. In many ways, this makes sense; the company is currently in a pretty heated battle with other giants in the adtech industry, especially Facebook, on some of his updates not so suitable for ads a iOS 14. One of the basic principles of the mobile operating system is a feature known as Application Tracking Transparency (or ATT, for short) from which you can read all here. Simply put, ATT requires third parties apps like Facebook to ask users for permission before tracking the different apps and services they use.

But as stated by the complaint of France Digitale, Apple’s own ad serving systems do not need to be bound by these ATT provisions, allowing Apple to track and target iOS users by default, without permission. The lobbyist summed it up by telling Bloomberg that iOS users “are not sufficiently informed about the use and processing of their personal data.”

despite this, as Apple noted, its own ad delivery systems are not geared toward tracking users of multiple applications, which is the behavior that ATT was designed to curb in the first place. Instead, the company says Apple’s personalized ads are targeted to broad categories, such as the country or city where they live, their age, or gender. Apple also allows users to directly manipulate the company’s ability to run these types of personalized ads directly inside setting up your iPhone.