Apple Threatened With Big Fines In Poland Due To IPhone Privacy Policy

UOKiK president Tomasz Chrryptny (photo: xyz.pl)

JAKARTA Poland's anti-monopoly authority, UOKiK, on Tuesday 15 November, said it was investigating whether Apple was limiting competition in the mobile advertising market through its privacy policy.

Regulators suspect that the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework introduced in iOS 14.5 and later versions could hamper third-party app capabilities in collecting user data for personalized advertising needs, while at the same time benefiting Apple's own advertising services.

"We suspect that the ATT policy may mislead users into the level of privacy protection provided, while increasing Apple's competitive advantage over independent publishers," said UOKiK President Tomasz Chr Maritalny, in an official statement.

According to UOKiK, such practices can be categorized as abuse of dominant positions. If the offense is proven, Apple could be fined up to 10% of its annual income in Poland.

Apple insists that ATT is designed to give users control over whether their activities can be tracked by other companies, in order to protect user privacy.

"It's no surprise that the data tracking industry opposes our efforts to restore data control to users, and now great pressure can force us to pull this feature, which is detrimental to European consumers," Apple said in an email statement.

The company added that it would cooperate with Polish business competition authorities to ensure Apple could continue to provide these privacy tools.

UOKiK said that business competition authorities in Germany, Italy and Romania are also investigating Apple's ATT policy. In addition, in March, French authorities imposed a fine of 150 million euros (IDR 2.8 trillion) on Apple.