France is at it again, challenging an American multinational on its business practices in the technology sector.
Specifically, Reuters reports that the France Digitale startup lobby is claiming that Apple’s new iOS 14 operating system violates European Union privacy regulations.
“France Digitale argues that while iPhone owners are asked whether they are ready to allow installed mobile apps to gather a key identifier used to define campaign ads and send targeted ads, default settings allow Apple to carry its own targeted ad campaigns without clearly asking iPhone users for their prior consent,” writes Mathieu Rosemain for Reuters.
In other words, Apple is giving some warnings for some kinds of data collection, but not other similar kinds of (Apple-internal?) data collection that take unique identifiers.
It would seem that if what France Digitale says is true, it does violate existing European laws like the GDPR, set up in recent years to protect EU citizens.
However, Apple denies that the allegations have merit.
“The allegations in the complaint are patently false and will be seen for what they are, a poor attempt by those who track users to distract from their own actions and mislead regulators and policymakers,” Apple spokespersons have responded, according to Rosemain’s reporting.
This isn’t the first battle for Apple with European agencies, or even the first one within the past year. It has sustained challenges from German and Spanish agencies surrounding antitrust investigations, and Apple has also rebuffed international claims that it evaded taxes with special deals in Ireland.
Now, Apple is fighting off the new French challenge in what many are calling a “David and Goliath” scenario. It’s never a good PR look to be the Goliath, and Apple has been playing this role for some time. Stock prices are historically high, and no stock keeps rising forever. Even though Warren Buffett holds nearly incredible amounts of Apple stock, that doesn’t mean that the company is immune to negative price activity. Stay tuned.
