Apple sued over ‘pervasive and unlawful data tracking’ in App Store controversy
Despite positioning itself as a pro-privacy technology company, Apple has been accused by iOS developers of behavior that “should raise many privacy concerns.” It all has to do with the App Store ads and the way usage data is allegedly shared with Apple, even if the user has turned off analytics sharing and personalized recommendations.
The Twitter account mysky, which is run by a couple of developers in Canada and Germany, posted a thread last week warning that if you use the App Store app in iOS 14.6, “every tap you make” will be recorded and sent to Apple. This happens regardless of user preferences and settings, the developers claim. Apple has designed several switches to reduce tracking, but the developers say that “opting out or disabling the personalization options did not reduce the amount of detailed analytics the app sent out.”
In a follow-up to Gizmodo, the developers found that several other apps, including Music, TV, Books, the iTunes Store, and Stocks, all sent data to Apple despite the privacy toggles. (However, the Health and Wallet apps didn’t send analytics data at all.) The site reports that most apps that sent analytics data shared consistent ID numbers, helping Apple track your activity within its services, the researchers found.
Apple was soon sued in a California lawsuit after the findings were made public. The lawsuit alleges that Apple is “violating state law in connection with illegally recording consumer confidential activities on its consumer mobile applications,” and accusing Apple of violating trust with “its ubiquitous and unlawful data recording and collection activities.”
The thread further points out that Apple’s alleged tracking seems ironic, as iOS 14.5 saw the introduction of strict measures to prevent third-party developers from tracking users without permission. It’s worth noting that the iOS 14.6 operating system is now over a year old, but the authors said they saw the same apps sending similar packets of data when running iOS 16.
This seems more a matter of design than a matter of technology, as the tracking took place amid the implementation of high-profile pro-privacy measures. It’s hard to see why Apple would still collect usage data under iOS 14.6 and then go back in a later update for no apparent reason.
Indeed, Apple has shifted its business model in the opposite direction since the heady days when App Tracking Transparency was touted as the future of user privacy. The increasing prevalence of App Store ads—despite the store already being a phenomenal revenue stream for Apple—indicates a strategy aimed at wringing out every drop of disposable income rather than prioritizing the user experience. And, of course, ads are much more effective when optimized with user data.
