French antitrust authority issues statement on Apple app tracking objections

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s antitrust authority said on Tuesday it had issued a statement of objection to Apple, citing concerns that the U.S. technology company may have violated rules related to the use of iPhone user data for advertising purposes.

The watchdog is concerned that Apple may “abuse its dominant position by imposing discriminatory, biased and non-transparent conditions on the use of user data for advertising purposes,” it said in a statement.

The statement triggers an antitrust procedure during which the company will be able to express its position, the supervisory authority informed.

Apple has denied these allegations. The mechanism “gives users greater control by requiring all apps to ask for permission before tracking them,” the company said in an emailed statement, adding that it “will continue to engage constructively” with the French regulator.

In 2020, four French online advertising industry groups filed an antitrust complaint against Apple over changes the company made to privacy features when it began asking iPhone owners whether they were willing to allow apps to collect data used to define and send targeted ads, the so-called Application Tracking Transparency (ATT).

According to industry lobby groups, this feature leads to a decline in publishers’ revenues.

Four associations – IAB France, MMAF, SRI and UDECAM – said Apple’s changes were not compliant with European Union privacy rules, citing that while a consent mechanism applied to third-party developers, Apple’s own apps did not include This.

“Apple apps do not display the ATT prompt because they do not track, which means they do not link user or device data to user or device data collected from third-party apps, websites, or offline properties for targeted advertising or ad measurement purposes, or whether share user or device data with data brokers,” Apple said.

“Apple holds its advertising practices to higher standards of privacy than any other developer,” the company added.

(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel and Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Susan Fenton, Mark Porter and Nick Macfie)