Apple fined €150 million over App Tracking Transparency issues

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. 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. Apple introduced the data privacy tool in June 2020 and began enforcing its use in April 2021 with the release of iOS 14.5 and iPadOS 14.5. 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 as implemented by Apple penalised smaller publishers in particular since, unlike the main vertically integrated platforms, they depend to a large extent on third-part ... Read full article.