Stefan Mileschin

Used position to impose conditions

France’s antitrust authority claims Apple abused its dominant market position to impose conditions on using personal data for advertising.

The French competition authority claims that Apple’s practices might have affected “several related markets for advertising services.”

The Tame Apple press has done its best to play down the action, claiming it is the first major governmental act against the US tech giant over its advertising rules. This ignores the fact that Germany, Italy and Poland have opened similar probes, it is just that France came out with a ruling first.

The French say that the App Tracking Transparency compels developers to ask for user permission if they plan on “tracking” their movements from app to app, a common tactic to build a user’s digital profile and target them with personalised ads.

Such “tracking” techniques rely on capturing the user’s “identifier for advertisers”, or IDFA, a string of digits comparable to a social security number. Apple announced the move in 2020, prompting claims in the $400 billion digital ad industry that it was an “IDFA apocalypse”.

https://fudzilla.com/news/57539-appl...poly-in-france