Apple has to pay a total of eight million euros in fines to the French state because the iPhone manufacturer is said to have broken local data protection laws with its actions in the App Store. A decision to this effect was taken by the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), the country’s supreme data protection authority. announced on Wednesday.
Targeting in the App Store illegal?
According to the CNIL, with the introduction of iOS 14.6, Apple violated the opt-in requirement for targeted advertising (targeting) in its app store. “The CNIL found that under the old version 14.6 of the iPhone operating system, identifiers for certain purposes – including the personalization of advertisements stored in the App Store – were automatically read from the end device by default without obtaining consent.” This happened every time you visit the App Store.
“Consequently, the CNIL body responsible for imposing sanctions found a violation of Article 82 of the law on freedom of information (“loi Informatique et Libertés”) and fined the company Apple Distribution International in the amount of 8 million euros, which has now been made public,” the publication continues.
Apple sees itself in the right
Apple itself doesn’t think much of the decision. One was disappointed by the decision of the CNIL, so a spokesman for the group in a statement to a journalist. The CNIL had previously “acknowledged that the way we display search ads in the App Store puts user privacy first”. An appeal will therefore be made. “Apple Search Ads goes further than any other digital advertising platform we know of by offering users a clear choice whether or not they want personalized advertising,” the company continued.
In addition, users are not tracked via third-party apps or websites. You only use “first-party data” for personalization. However, this data is fairly extensive, since the group is the provider of the iPhone operating system. Apple further emphasized that it considers “privacy a fundamental human right”. Users should “always decide for themselves whether their data is shared and with whom”. The CNIL decision follows a process that started in 2021. At that time, the lobby organization France Digitale, which supports venture capital companies and their start-ups, among other things, officially lodged a complaint. It said, among other things, that the App Store regulations since iOS 14 violated the GDPR.
(bsc)
