Apple has been fined the equivalent of A$12.5 million by France’s data protection commission for illegally installing trackers for targeted advertising onto iPhones.
The CNIL found that Apple did not “obtain the consent of French iPhone users (iOS 14.6 version) before depositing and/or writing identifiers used for advertising purposes on their terminals.”
The CNIL found this was a breach of Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act, and fined Apple €8 million.
“We are disappointed with this decision given the CNIL has previously recognised that how we serve search ads in the App Store prioritises user privacy, and we will appeal,” said an Apple spokesperson.
“Apple Search Ads goes further than any other digital advertising platform we are aware of by providing users with a clear choice as to whether or not they would like personalised ads.”
The CNIL explained their ruling in a press release:
“Due to their advertising purpose, these identifiers are not strictly necessary for the provision of the service (the App Store). Therefore, they must not be read and/or deposited without the user’s prior consent. However, in practice, the advertising targeting settings available from the “Settings” icon of the iPhone were pre-checked by default.
“Moreover, the user had to perform a large number of actions in order to deactivate this setting, since this option was not included in the initialisation process of the phone. Therefore, the user had to click on the ‘Settings’ icon of the iPhone, then go to the “Privacy” menu and finally to the section entitled ‘Apple advertising’. These elements did not allow to collect the prior consent of users.”
This is a particularly embarrassing finding, given Apple’s “Privacy. That’s iPhone” sloganeering of late.
