Polish antitrust watchdog investigates Apple over ad privacy policy

With App Tracking Transparency, apps are required to get a user’s permission to track or access their device’s advertising identifier.
Poland’s antitrust authority, UOKiK, announced on Tuesday that it has launched an investigation into whether Apple is abusing its dominant position in the mobile advertising market through its privacy rules.
The regulator in probing whether Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature, rolled out with iOS 14.5 and subsequent versions, is restricting third-party apps’ access to user data for targeted advertising while giving preferential treatment to Apple’s own ad platform.
Reuters:
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“We suspect that the ATT policy may have misled users about the level of privacy protection while simultaneously increasing Apple’s competitive advantage over independent publishers,” UOKiK President Tomasz Chrostny was quoted as saying in a statement.
“Such practices may constitute an abuse of dominant position.”
If confirmed, Apple could face a fine of up to 10% of its annual turnover in Poland.
Apple said the ATT framework was created to offer consumers a way to control whether companies can track their activity, helping them to safeguard their privacy.
“It is no surprise that the data tracking industry continues to oppose our efforts to give users back control over their data, and now intense pressure could force us to withdraw this feature, to the detriment of European consumers,” it said in an emailed statement.

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MacDailyNews Take: At least we’ll find out how many Poles it takes to figure out Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature.

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