[HN Gopher] French watchdog rejects request to suspend Apple's A...
___________________________________________________________________
French watchdog rejects request to suspend Apple's App Tracking
Transparency
Author : spideymans
Score : 69 points
Date : 2021-03-17 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thetelegram.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thetelegram.com)
| ben_w wrote:
| What Apple is doing sounds like requiring that tracking
| capability is only given in the case of users who actively agree
| with a meaningful opportunity to decline.
|
| Whenever there is a discussion of GDPR and cookie popups, someone
| claims that "By using this website you automatically agree to
| cookies" is against the requirements of GDPR.
|
| I am aware that my total lack of legal qualifications can make
| two unrelated things seem like the same thing, so a question to
| anyone who knows:
|
| Is Apple requiring anything that is not already required by GDPR?
| Macha wrote:
| This article states that that is at least the view of the
| french antitrust watchdog after consulting with the body
| responsible for enforcing privacy laws in France.
|
| Certainly by the spirit of the GDPR, Apple is enforcing the
| expectation. Whether there is legal wriggle room for a more
| limited interpretation appears to be up to your local
| regulator's decision making about who to prosecute.
|
| I'm at least not aware of anyone winning a case on viewwrap or
| required consent, though privacy bodies aren't keeping up with
| people finding new excuses to not comply.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The GDPR mandates that any non-essential tracking should be
| strictly opt-in, and targeted advertising doesn't fall into
| that. The problem is that the GDPR is not enforced (at least
| not that aspect of it - preempting "enforcementtracker.com"
| links trying to prove me wrong) so websites get away with it.
|
| It is my understanding as well that the Apple changes don't
| require anything new that the GDPR didn't require anyway, so
| should these companies have been compliant it wouldn't have
| been a problem.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| Apple gets to force a UI that says allow/decline instead of the
| usual website ui of "continue/advanced settings"
| Macha wrote:
| The ICO indicates the GDPR (Well UK GDPR now they've left the
| EU, but it hasn't had time to diverge yet) unambiguous
| consent is satisified by:
|
| > Clear affirmative action means someone must take deliberate
| and specific action to opt in or agree to the processing,
| even if this is not expressed as an opt-in box. For example,
| other affirmative opt-in methods might include signing a
| consent statement, oral confirmation, a binary choice
| presented with equal prominence, or switching technical
| settings away from the default.
|
| > The key point is that all consent must be opt-in consent,
| ie a positive action or indication - there is no such thing
| as 'opt-out consent'. Failure to opt out is not consent as it
| does not involve a clear affirmative act. You may not rely on
| silence, inactivity, default settings, pre-ticked boxes or
| your general terms and conditions, or seek to take advantage
| of inertia, inattention or default bias in any other way. All
| of these methods also involve ambiguity - and for consent to
| be valid it must be both unambiguous and affirmative. It must
| be clear that the individual deliberately and actively chose
| to consent.
|
| So allow/decline is a "binary choice presented with equal
| prominence" as required but "allow/more info" or
| "allow/advanced settings" is not equal prominence (especially
| when visual styling emphasises Allow, or more info/advanced
| settings is buried in text.
|
| https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio...
| mig39 wrote:
| Weird to see my favourite Newfoundland newspaper on Hacker News.
|
| Unrelated fact -- my first job many decades ago was delivering
| the physical version of this newspaper.
|
| I'm happy to see they are still in business, even if this is a
| Reuters wire story.
| neom wrote:
| "French groups IAB France, MMAF, SRI and UDECAM complained to the
| French watchdog last year, saying the feature would not affect
| Apple's ability to send targeted ads to users of its own iOS
| software without seeking their prior consent."
|
| What targeted ads are apple sending? iAd was discontinued in
| 2016, was it replaced with something?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Technically the statement isn't false (it indeed doesn't affect
| their *ability' to do so) but they don't do targeted ads so
| it's an argument in bad faith.
| ruph123 wrote:
| Maybe the App Store's ads (e.g. when you search).
| neom wrote:
| I searched on that to try and find out, and found this:
|
| "Ads that are delivered by Apple's advertising platform may
| appear on the App Store, Apple News, and Stocks. Apple's
| advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does
| not link user or device data collected from our apps with
| user or device data collected from third parties for targeted
| advertising or advertising measurement purposes, and does not
| share user or device data with data brokers."
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT205223
| bryan_w wrote:
| That's some pretty tricky wording there. They are basically
| saying that you could target someone who reads something in
| Apple News for an ad in the App Store. This is behavior
| that they are preventing other companies from doing
| effectively by making others go through tracking screens
| but exempting itself.
|
| Despite how much you might trust Apple, you can agree that
| they should have to have the same tracking restrictions
| that all other apps have.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Apple's advertising platform does not track you
|
| This seems pretty straightforward.
| fatnoah wrote:
| Based on that wording, they could use the data to perform
| their own targeted advertising in those places. They just
| won't share the data with third parties.
| 1f60c wrote:
| Aren't those keyword-based?
| nostromo wrote:
| Even if they did track that, it would be first-party
| tracking, which is fine. Just like Facebook can still show
| you ads based on what you do on Facebook.
|
| It wouldn't be fine if Apple sold that data to third parties.
|
| This seems to be what most people expect. My mom knows that
| what she's doing on Facebook is tracked by Facebook. She
| probably does not know that what she's doing in other apps is
| also tracked by Facebook.
| permo-w wrote:
| Also, surely the solution to that would be to force Apple to
| comply with the same rules, not to remove the feature entirely?
|
| As another commenter said, it's clearly an argument in bad
| faith
| zepto wrote:
| They aren't. This is just FUD from groups that oppose getting
| user permission for tracking.
| okr wrote:
| The french original:
| https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/fr/communiques-de-pre...
| vorticalbox wrote:
| Do you get the same pop up on apple apps or only on apps you've
| installed?
|
| Because I can see that being classed as favoring apple services
| and apps of it is the case.
|
| Not sure why I am getting down voted, this was a genuine
| question.
| lstamour wrote:
| I think for the sake of conversation we would have to draw a
| dividing line between the operating system Apple makes and the
| apps Apple makes, even when that line can be very, very blurry.
| (Pre-installed apps, the App Store itself, etc.)
|
| I'm having a hard time with the App Store, both as an example
| of an app that shows ads and should therefore not be allowed to
| use the device ID without prompting, but also being the app
| that manages the apps you run on a device, and therefore might
| require a device ID to function correctly?
|
| But perhaps the answer is simpler than that, and Apple only
| needs to keyword-match to show ads in the App Store, no
| tracking ID required?
|
| Personally, I would solve this dilemma by eliminating App Store
| ads. Users want the app they searched for, not the app a
| competitor is paying Apple to promote...
| amelius wrote:
| > Users want the app they searched for, not the app a
| competitor is paying Apple to promote...
|
| But wait, you can apply this line of reasoning to any product
| that is promoted through ads.
| kergonath wrote:
| You don't need any kind of tracking for App Store ads,
| because the App Store is already aware of all your purchasing
| history. Same thing for any storefront: Amazon's stats based
| on your history won't be affected either.
| Koliakis wrote:
| > I think for the sake of conversation we would have to draw
| a dividing line between the operating system Apple makes and
| the apps Apple makes, even when that line can be very, very
| blurry. (Pre-installed apps, the App Store itself, etc.)
|
| There is no meaningful difference when Apple uses "We already
| have an app for this" as a justification to remove third-
| party apps from their platform.
| kergonath wrote:
| Apple has been asking for permission for privacy-sensitive
| features for quite a while now, with dialogs that are more
| intimidation than these.
| kovrik wrote:
| Same popups for all apps (at least for me).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-17 23:02 UTC)