Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted in Washington DC today where he met with lawmakers to push back against proposed App Store age policy that Apple says doesn’t protect user privacy.
Cook met with members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Capitol Hill to express Apple’s privacy concerns.
If turned into law, the App Store Accountability Act would legally make Apple responsible for age verification through the App Store. Apple’s position has been to instead have parents be responsible for setting age guidelines on child accounts.
In a statement provided to 9to5Mac, Apple says it wants the legislation to avoid suggesting that companies must collect highly sensitive documents about minors.
The company maintains that parents should be the ones to provide a child’s age when setting up an account, and it says any age-assurance measures should focus on confirming that the adult establishing the account is actually an adult.
Apple also says that any information used to determine age should not have to be retained by app stores or developers. The company adds that parents should have control over whether their child’s age range is shared with developers.
The meeting comes after Apple global head of privacy Hilary Ware responded to the proposed legislation in a letter to the committee last week.
In the letter, Ware expressed that the proposed law “could threaten the privacy of all users by forcing millions of adults to surrender their private information for the simple act of downloading an app.”
“There are better proposals that help keep kids safe without requiring millions of people to turn over their personal information,” Ware wrote in the letter. “Apple’s age assurance feature is one such example of a more achievable, privacy-focused path forward… This privacy-preserving solution allows a parent to share their child’s age range with an app developer, without having to share sensitive, specific information like a birthdate or government ID.”
Apple has already introduced an age rating system for the App Store, and child accounts have been updated to support more granular age ranges. Apple has also made changes to comply with a new child safety law in Texas that goes into effect on January 1, 2026.