French Competition Watchdog Fines Apple $162.4 Million Over App Tracking Transparency

France’s competition regulator fined Apple 150 million euros ($162.4 million) over concerns the company abused its dominant position in mobile apps through the privacy measures it imposes on developers on its iPhone and iPad’s operating system. The watchdog said that the goal of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency system–which since 2021 has forced app developers to issue a prompt asking permission to track users’ activity across multiple apps–is not open to criticism, but the way the company implements its policy is “neither necessary nor proportionate to Apple’s stated objective of protecting personal data.” The regulator said that Apple’s services don’t face the same restrictions and that its policy penalizes smaller publishers because they depend on collecting third-party data to finance their business. An Apple spokesperson said that the system gives users more control of their privacy by mandating that developers issue a prompt to ask permission to track data, adding that it has received strong support for the feature from consumers, privacy advocates and data protection authorities.