The allegations are that Apple’s privacy settings in the App Store were just a ruse to take advantage of the digital advertising market.
Two proposed class action suits have been filed in California and New York federal court.
The Californian suit takes aim at Apple’s campaign to assure users their privacy is being protected by the company, despite collecting an enormous wealth of data and personal information.
The goal of these privacy setting changes was to protect its own ad revenue at the expense of other competitors such as Facebook.
Third-party apps are now required to ask a user’s permission to track them across apps and websites owned by other companies, after the release of iPadOS 14.5 in April 2021.
Advertising revenue plummeted across the industry due to the majority of users opting out of tracking.
Apple went on a public campaign, with slogans such as, “It’s your data, iPhone helps keep it that way.”
Apple respects your ability to know, access, correct, transfer, restrict the processing of, and remove personal data.
Apple is accused of deceiving users into believing that their data is protected with the “AllowAPPS to Request to Track” feature.
Apple violated explicit privacy promises by tracking and collecting large amounts of personal information.
Privacy is a fundamental right and we build it into all products and services at Apple, says CEO Tim Cook. The highest bidder should not be in control of your data.
The complaint states that Apple knows that the assurances and promises regarding consumer user privacy are false and misleading.
Apple engages in such conduct even though it knows that consumers want to keep their User Data private, and expect and demand control over their own such data, out of an increasing concern that companies are using such information without their knowledge or permission, and, worse yet, profiting from such exploitative practices.
Apple has portrayed and tried to distinguish itself from competitors by various representations to its Mobile Device Consumers that they are able to control the information.
Apple stated in a statement thatidentifiable information is never shared with third parties and is not used to track users across apps and websites.
All data used for advertising purposes is disassociated from personal identifiers, and Apple Advertising operates on the basis of de-identifying data.
