Apple advertising system accused of not seeking user’s consent for targeted ads

Complaint in France focuses on an Apple feature called Personalised Advertising that shows ads in the App Store, Apple News, and the Stocks app, based on a user’s data

France Digitale filed the complaint, saying that Apple’s advertising system does not seek a user’s consent for receiving targeted ads. File picture

Apple’s advertising tool, used to monetise some of its apps and services, is the target of a new complaint in France.

France Digitale, a lobby group representing startups and venture capital firms, filed the complaint, saying that Apple’s advertising system does not seek a user’s consent for receiving targeted ads. 

The complaint focuses on an Apple feature called Personalised Advertising that shows ads in the App Store, Apple News, and the Stocks app, based on a user’s data. The complaint comes as Apple is preparing to release an iPhone and iPad software update that limits how much data third-party advertising systems, such as those from Facebook, can gather about users. 

Unlike that feature, Apple’s personalised advertising system is enabled by default. Users are “insufficiently informed about the use and the processing of its personal data”, wrote the association in the complaint to the French regulator CNIL, which was obtained by Bloomberg News.

The Apple feature is different from the App Tracking Transparency feature that has irked Facebook and others, but France Digitale alleges that Apple still has a leg up over third parties on iPhone app-based advertising.

“The allegations in the complaint are patently false and will be seen for what they are, a poor attempt by those who track users to distract from their own actions and mislead regulators and policymakers,” said Apple. 

“Transparency and control for the user are fundamental pillars of our privacy philosophy, which is why we’ve made App Tracking Transparency equally applicable to all developers including Apple. Privacy is built into the ads we sell on our platform with no tracking.” 

Apple also said its advertising system does not track users across apps, the practice that App Tracking Transparency is designed to limit.

“When users have Personalised Ads on, we target ads by grouping together users who share similar characteristics such as apps downloaded, age, country or city of residence, and gender into segments so that a given campaign or set of campaigns can’t identify a given user,” according to a recent letter from Jane Horvath, Apple’s head of privacy.

France Digitale’s move comes after a group of French online advertisers filed a complaint with the country’s competition authority, asking it to halt Apple’s changes to how iPhone users’ data is collected. 

The UK’s competition authority last week said it opened a probe into Apple after complaints that its terms and conditions for app developers were anti-competition and unfair. 

The French complaint follows the November push by Noyb against Apple. The group, founded by privacy activist Max Schrems, filed a complaint to German and Spanish privacy watchdogs, saying Apple unlawfully installed a service on its devices that helps it and apps to track users’ behaviour.

• Bloomberg