Autorité de la concurrence, France's antitrust watchdog, has fined Apple €150 million ($162 million) for using the App Tracking Transparency privacy framework to abuse its dominant market position in mobile app advertising on its devices. "As part of its investigation into the merits of the case, the Autorité found that while the objective of the App Tracking Transparency ("ATT") framework is not at its core problematic, how ATT is implemented is neither necessary for nor proportionate with Apple's stated objective of protecting personal data," the watchdog said. Given the seriousness of the facts, Apple's economic power, and the duration of the infringement (between 26 April 2021 and 25 July 2023), the French competition watchdog imposed a fine of €150 million and also ordered Apple to publish the decision's summary on its website for seven consecutive days. Two years ago, France's data protection authority (CNIL) also fined Apple €8 million ($8.5 million) for collecting user data for targeted advertising on the App Store without consent. The fine comes one year after the European Commission fined Apple €1.8 billion (roughly $1.95 billion) for abusing its dominant market position to prevent other music streaming services from promoting cheaper services outside its App Store. App Tracking Transparency (ATT) requires apps to request users' permission to collect their data for targeted advertising purposes before tracking them across websites, apps, and services owned by other companies. "ATT as implemented by Apple penalised 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 competition regulator said. The French competition authority said that although ATT's goal is not inherently problematic, its implementation is neither necessary nor proportionate to Apple's declared objective of protecting its customers' personal information. ATT also creates an imbalance, given that user access to Apple apps is easier because the company exempts its apps from the regulations that third-party app publishers must follow or provide access to their apps. Using multiple consent pop-ups puts app publishers at a disadvantage, as users must confirm tracking consent twice but can easily refuse it with a single click, the Autorité de la concurrence said.
This Cyber News was published on www.bleepingcomputer.com. Publication date: Tue, 01 Apr 2025 16:40:08 +0000