When it comes to privacy, Apple has always presented itself as the golden boy of Big Tech.
Now part of the glow comes off.
An internal document of the French data regulator, seen by POLITICO, revealed on Tuesday that the advertising practices targeted by the iPhone manufacturer could be in line with the law of the European Union legislation on privacy.
The analysis of the French watchdog – which stops finding the wrong facts – came as part of an investigation by the country’s competition authority into Apple’s new anti-tracking tool. These changes, which will be released soon, will give people more opinions on how their data is collected and used by third-party applications, exacerbating problems among Facebook and smaller application developers that the company is not playing right.
But while both French regulators have given an overview of this feature, called the Apple Tracking Transparency, the Apple Watchdog has given its own advertising company an even more damaging rating to the iPhone maker.
“Apple’s advertising processing requires consent when it involves reading or writing data on the user’s device,” wrote in its internal document the National Commission for Informatics and Freedoms or CNIL. “Apple’s practices suggest a lack of consent collection.”
optional the assessment – which is cautiously formulated because it is designed to inform another case rather than provide grounds for an independent investigation – calls into question Apple’s credentials for confidentiality.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly denounced the “industrial data complex” by slamming at data-hungry Google and Facebook ad models – while trying to position his own company as a paragon. of the virtue of confidentiality in comparison.
Cook’s action underscores how hostile relations have become between some of Silicon Valley’s largest companies, while trying to position itself publicly on important issues such as privacy, sustainability and human rights.
“In a time of misinformation and conspiracy theories drawn by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says any commitment is a good commitment – the longer the better – and all for the purpose of collect as much data as possible, ”Cook told the online public in January, while upholding the company’s own data protection standards.
The introduction of the anti-tracking feature, to be launched in Apple’s iOS 14 later this year, was just the latest rescue from the company’s offer to claim the high moral reason for privacy. Now he might back down.
While the CNIL was only asked to inform a case involving the feature, rather than to investigate the company’s own practices, further assessment of the regulatory authority could have consequences. It could be fueled by another privacy complaint filed in March by the startup France Digitale lobby.
This complaint accuses Apple of violating privacy rules by “systematically collecting user consent by default on iOS 14 to engage in targeted advertising in its native applications.”
He is not the only one targeting the American company’s advertising practices.
A nonprofit, led by Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems, has also filed complaints in Germany and Spain, accusing the company’s tracking code of violating privacy. The company denies any wrongdoing.
The Cupertino-based technology giant has more privacy investigations conducted by the Irish Data Protection Commission than Google, including one on its behavioral advertising business. Dublin is both the main EU regulatory company as they are legally established in the Irish capital.
For some viewers, Apple’s confidential embrace of privacy hides an inner ecosystem that thrives on exploiting personal information in the same way as other Silicon Valley powers. Although it does not provide data to outsiders, such as Facebook and Google, the iPhone maker has a growing business of digital services and advertising, which is still based on collecting people’s digital information.
“Even though Apple is now making these moves to become stricter on privacy, it is still taking advantage of creating an ecosystem that is generally truly invasive in private,” said Joris van Hoboken of Vrije University in Vrije. Brussels, studying Big Technology.
He highlighted Apple’s software development kits that allow game developers to create in-depth user profiles – efforts that the company itself benefits from. “They have this incentive to create the conditions for intrusive business models with high data intensity and privacy by applications, and then take advantage of that directly,” said van Hoboken.
Asked for comments on the French regulator’s findings, an Apple spokesman backed up an earlier statement that said: “Privacy is embedded in the ads we sell on our platform. We stand by a higher standard, allowing users to opt out of the limited use of Apple data from early users for personalized advertising, a feature that makes us unique. ”
Not everyone is so sure.
Johnny Ryan, a privacy activist who has often messed with Google over his data practices, said Apple’s privacy protection was better than most of his colleagues. But any company, including the iPhone maker, should not be allowed to use people’s data within its own digital empire in ways that others in the world are not allowed to do.
“What we see is a free internal data system for everyone,” said Ryan, an elderly member of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. “The data practices inside these companies are alive and well.”
Laura Kayali contributed to the reporting.