Poland is latest to probe Apple’s app tracking transparency change – over self-preference issues – TechCrunch

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The Polish competition supervisor is the latest to investigate Apple about policy changes to its mobile platform that affect how third-party apps can track iOS users by requiring them to request permission before they can acquire the data.

The country’s Competition and Consumer Protection Office (UOKiK) said today that it has opened an investigation into changes to the functioning of Apple’s mobile platform in relation to the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature it requires from app developers to ask iOS users for permission to track them for ad targeting.

Apple has been contacted for comment.

The tech giant announced ATT in the summer of last year, launching it, after some delay and constant objections from advertisers, with iOS 14.5 earlier this year.

“In practice, this means that Apple has significantly reduced the ability of third-party apps to obtain personal data on iOS to send personalized ads,” UOKiK writes in a press release from the investigation. “However, this does not mean that user information is no longer collected and that they do not receive personalized ads. At the same time, doubts have arisen that Apple’s rules were not designed to promote its own advertising service, Apple Search Ads, which could be a violation of competition principles. “

“The actions of the digital giants are a challenge for antitrust authorities around the world,” added Tomasz Chróstny, president of UOKiK, in a statement. “In the course of our investigation, we want to examine whether Apple’s actions can be aimed at eliminating competitors in the market for personalized advertising services, with the aim of better selling its service. We will investigate whether this is a case of exclusive abuse of market power. “

The French competition supervisory authority has already looked into ATT, following complaints from advertisers.

However, earlier this year, France’s Autorité de la concurrence refused to block Apple’s launch of ATT, stating in March that it did not consider introducing the feature to abuse of dominance.

Although the Autorité said it would continue to investigate the policy change, specifically stating that it wanted to check whether Apple was applying less restrictive rules for its apps than third-party developer announcements (which appears to be a key part of the concern. leading UOKiK’s investigation).

Cupertino was accused of hypocrisy by advertisers who pointed to the previous default settings on iOS that allowed users to access Apple’s tracking-based ads versus the new requirement that third parties must seek permission.

In October, the FT also reported that the move had created what it described as “a boon” for Apple, suggesting that the company’s advertising business more than tripled its market share in the six months following introduction. changes that prevented rivals from targeting ads with users. (While it’s worth noting that Apple’s search ads comprise only a small fraction of the entire mobile advertising market, so 3 times of a small amount is still a very small beer.)

Also noteworthy: in iOS 15, Apple quietly changed its previous default that it had opted for iOS users to receive their own personalized ads, as reported by 9to5Mac in September, when it started prompting users for their own. consent to ad targeting, making it more in line with its policy requires third parties to request user permission to track.

Although, again important to note, iOS users have always been able to turn off Apple ad tracking via their device settings, unlike some third party apps (like Facebook) which don’t offer users any choice on the ad tracking.

Perhaps the most interesting element of the Polish investigation is not, therefore, the question of whether Apple is playing fair, but its observation that ATT “does not mean that user information is no longer collected and that they do not receive personalized ads” . Although the probe seems more closely focused on whether or not Apple is self-preferential. (We have contacted UOKiK with questions about its investigation and will update this report if the regulator responds.)

A study of ATT’s “effectiveness” in disrupting third-party tracking, conducted by an ad blocker called Lockdown Privacy and released this fall, questioned whether the feature simply creates an “illusion of privacy”, given that the researchers found no difference in the total number of active third-party trackers; and what they described as “minimal impact” on the total number of third-party tracking connection attempts.

“We also confirmed that detailed personal or device data was being sent to trackers in almost all cases,” the study also concluded.

Whether greater transparency should lead to a reduction in tracking scripts – and thus whether this is a good way to measure ATT’s “efficiency” – is a question to ponder.

Another is how the market might change in response to platform downturns like ATT or, well, pretending to change.

Last week, another report from the FT suggested that Apple may have reached what the newspaper described as a “quiet truce” with advertisers, claiming it was loosely interpreting ATT’s policy to continue allowing third parties to collect. reams of personal data, as long as the data they devoured is “anonymized and aggregated rather than tied to specific user profiles”.

The fact is, the adtech industry has a long history of bogus anonymization claims. While a myriad of faceless adtech entities have spawned and proliferated in space by exchanging and “synchronizing” user data with each other, to undermine people’s privacy and erode their ability to protect themselves from tracking by precisely re-identifying individuals (via their devices, ad IDs, cookie data, etc., etc.) so that they can continue the profitable business of creating profiles to target ads to people.

So if the suggestions of a handful of prominent advertisers cited in the FT article, including Snap and Facebook, who are shifting their ad targeting efforts to “cohort” advertising would survive close scrutiny of what’s coming actually done with any incoming flows of “aggregated” iOS user data remains to be seen. (And it may actually require regulatory oversight, for example through legislative proposals such as the European Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, which effectively performs due diligence.)

Advertising giant Google has also – in recent years – lobbied the industry to switch to cohort-based targeting – which it claims is better for privacy, even though its suggested technology “federated cohort learning” (aka FloCs) wouldn’t. nothing to prevent vulnerable groups from being selected for targeted manipulation. (Indeed, some critics of Google’s proposal suggest it will actually make predatory targeting worse.)

In the UK, Google’s self-styled “Privacy Sandbox” plan has sparked close regulatory interest.

It is currently overseen by the UK Competition Supervisory Authority, which has said they want to ensure market changes are implemented fairly for advertisers and Google’s competitors and also not terrible for user privacy (although oversight of the latter the piece is passed on to the UK ICO, which has a reputation for failing to enforce one of the adtech industry’s myriad privacy breaches, so …).

All this to say that the balancing act (of power) is real. But even that regional regulation is much more antitrust muscle than it has ever been in defending privacy and data protection, which risks an unbalanced outcome when it comes to adtech versus privacy. So the stakes for users remain incredibly high.

The European Union, meanwhile, has been a bit of a spectator on this front.

It has its own active antitrust case pending against Apple, relating to the rules it applies to its App Store. However, the Commission’s complaint focuses strictly on the music streaming market, so only fears that Apple is potentially distorting competition in that specific segment.

The EU antitrust division also keeps an eye on Apple Pay – but, so far, the Commission has not taken action in relation to ATT – which leaves national competition regulators across the bloc, such as Poland’s UOKiK and the ‘Autorité de la concurrence of France free to pursue the investigation if they feel the concern is deserved.

The Commission finally opened a formal investigation into Google’s adtech this summer, which includes examining its Sandbox proposal. But it is fair to say that the EU executive lagged behind in adtech control and interventions. (As well as national data protection regulators.)

So a lack of joint thinking at the national level – between European competition authorities and privacy regulators – could risk putting chilling limits on even the (limited) privacy-enhancing changes that a powerful platform company like Apple can. make.

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