France’s CNIL has fined Apple $8.5 million for collecting iPhone user data without prior consent.
Apple seeks to position itself as a privacy-first company and often emphasizes its differences from Google and Meta. A large part of its marketing is to claim that Apple doesn’t want, need, or care about user data. Unfortunately, reality doesn’t quite match the hype.
The CNIL has fined Apple for collecting data from iPhone users and using it for targeted advertising without obtaining users’ prior consent. According to the regulator, Cupertino did not “obtain the consent of his iPhone user in France (iOS version 14.6) before depositing and/or writing identifiers used for advertising purposes into his device”. .
Additionally, the CNIL says Apple makes it unnecessarily difficult for individuals to disable data collection.
The fine is unusual for Apple given its well-cultivated reputation, but it shows the growing divide between Apple’s image and reality. Apple has been accused of being the main beneficiary of privacy crackdowns, but other companies have suffered greatly.
Similarly, Apple has been accused of turning a blind eye to companies that use loopholes to circumvent the iOS App Tracking Transparency feature and continue to track users against their wishes.
If Apple wants to maintain its reputation as a privacy-first company, it clearly has to do to live up to its own marketing hype.
