Apple has been slapped with a penalty of 8 million euros (more than Rs 70 crore) by French regulator for violating France’s data protection rules with its personalised targeted app store ads. According to the National Commission for Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) of France, the iPhone maker did not take the consent of iPhone users before using identifiers to present targeted advertisements in the iOS 14.6 update.
The Cupertino, California-headquartered tech giant was collecting information and using that data for advertisements by default, and as per France's CNIL, users had to undertake a "large number of actions" to turn advertising off in the Privacy section of the Settings app. Therefore, CNIL ruled that Apple breached Article 82 of the Data Protection Act, leading to a sanction of 8 million euros, says a report by MacRumors.
The CNIL services have found that under the old version 14.6 of the iPhone operating system, when a user went to the App Store, identifiers for several purposes, including purposes of customizing advertising ads displayed on the App Store, were by default automatically read on the terminal without collecting consent, the report added.
"The advertising targeting settings available from the "Settings" icon of the iPhone were pre-checked by default", CNIL was quoted as saying in a statement by news agency Reuters, even though that was not strictly necessary for the device's functioning.
According to Fortune's Patrick McGee, the iPhone maker is "disappointed" with the French regulator's decision and plans to appeal, noting that it only uses its own data for personalised ads.
Apple has privacy updates, which are called App Tracking Transparency, and they give users the option to block apps from tracking activity across apps and websites owned by other firms.
Meanwhile, refuting previous reports that said Apple may have cut iPhone production orders, key iPhone assembler Foxconn has claimed that December 2022 iPhone orders were not trimmed down. Recent reports suggested that the tech giant has asked its contract suppliers to cut down production of iPhones, MacBooks and AirPods in the wake of weak demand.