Apple officially under investigation by French regulators over App Tracking Transparency

Earlier this year, it was reported that regulators in France were likely to investigate Apple for unfairly using its position as App Store operator to negatively affect advertising companies. Now the French Competition Authority has formally notified Apple of the investigation.

The complaint was initially issued by four French advertising trade groups. They believe that Apple unfairly cut off user data collection that powered the advertising industry. New today is an official response by the French Competition Authority [machine learning translated]:

Apple is accused of abusing its dominant position by implementing discriminatory, non-objective and non-transparent conditions for the use of user data for advertising purposes.

This act of investigation opens the contradictory procedure and allows the exercise of the rights of the defence. It cannot prejudge the guilt of the company that received a notification of grievances. Only the instruction conducted in a contradictory manner, in compliance with the rights of the defence of the company concerned, will allow the college to determine, after exchanges of written observations and after an oral session, whether or not the grievance is well founded.

The move kicks off a new round of regulatory procedures that Apple will need to fight in France. In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple responded to the development by pointing out that regulators have favorably viewed its data protection policies in the past:

“App Tracking Transparency (ATT) gives users more control by requiring all apps to ask permission before tracking them. Apple, like all developers, is required to comply with ATT. Apple’s apps do not show an ATT prompt because they do not track, meaning they do not link user or device data with user or device data collected from other companies’ apps, websites, or offline properties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, nor do they share user or device data with data brokers. Additionally, Apple holds its advertising business to a higher standard of privacy than it requires of any other developer by prompting users for explicit permission before delivering any personalized ads. We have previously received strong support from regulators and privacy advocates on the goal of ATT, including from the FCA and the CNIL, and we will continue to engage with the FCA constructively to ensure users remain in control of their data.”

Follow our continuing coverage of App Tracking Transparency here.