Italy’s competition watchdog agency, Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), has fined Apple € 98.6 million ($ 116 million) over the App Tracking Transparency feature. Here are the details.
A bit of background
Since Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT), the feature has been criticized by companies and media groups over how it works on third-party apps, compared to Apple’s own properties.
They argue that while ATT imposes strict limits on third-party data collection and tracking, Apple’s platforms and apps aren’t subject to the same limitations.
Apple, for its part, argues that this is not an accurate comparison, since it “has designed services and features such as Siri, Maps, FaceTime, and iMessage such that the company cannot link data across those services even if it wished to do so.”
Over the past few years, Apple has faced multiple antitrust probes examining whether ATT has anticompetitive effects.
Just a few weeks ago, Apple moved to appease antitrust concerns in Germany, which added to investigations and fines in France and Brazil, among other countries.
The Italian fine
Today, Italy’s AGCM fined Apple € 98.6 million for “abuse of a dominant position”:
The Authority conducted a complex investigation in coordination with the European Commission, other national competition authorities and the Italian Data Protection Authority. The Authority’s findings confirmed the restrictive nature – from a competition-law perspective – of the App Tracking Transparency (“ATT”) policy, i.e. the privacy rules imposed by Apple for iOS devices, as of April 2021, on third-party developers of apps distributed through the App Store. In particular, third-party app developers are required to obtain specific consent for the collection and linking of data for advertising purposes through Apple’s ATT prompt. However, such prompt does not meet privacy legislation requirements, forcing developers to double the consent request for the same purpose.
Italy’s AGCM concluded that ATT’s policies “are imposed unilaterally and harm the interests of Apple’s commercial partners”, characterizing the feature as “disproportionate to the achievement of the company’s stated data protection objectives”.
The AGCM concedes that while Apple may have a “potentially legitimate decision to adopt safeguards designed to strengthen (…) the protection of users’ privacy within the iOS system, (…) the imposition of measures that are excessively burdensome for developers and disproportionate to the privacy-protection objective allegedly pursued by Apple.”
They also argue that ATT’s current implementation forces developers to request consent twice for the same purpose, because the ATT prompt does not satisfy GDPR consent requirements, requiring developers to deploy their own consent mechanism in addition to it.
Apple has already confirmed that it will appeal the fine. To read the full decision, follow this link.
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