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Apple fined $8.5M for illegally collecting iPhone owners' data for ads
- andry_ad 4y agoDid they make only $8.5mil? I doubt. Why not fine them for their profit? At this point, fines like this are treated as expenses.
- CamperBob2 4y agoExactly. "Illegal with a fine" is "Legal for a price." If the fine is less than the profit, then it's just another cost of doing business. Edit: What's controversial about this statement? It's patently obvious, especially when you factor in the odds that your behavior will go unnoticed or unprosecuted. Do you people think I'm advocating this?!
- getToTheChopin 4y agoThe fine should be equivalent to profit plus a hefty penalty on top of that. Other wise there's no dis-incentive against repeat behaviour.
- null_object 4y ago> The fine should be equivalent to profit plus a hefty penalty on top of that. So this was a toggle in an obscure preferences setting toggled incorrectly and therefore a minor infringement of EU law - but you want the court to fine Apple their entire profit? plus some random extra amount? Wow. Aside from this being completely stupid to anyone who doesn’t share your irrational level of Apple hatred, how would you deal with a really serious offense?
- CamperBob2 4y agoThey should be fined the profit that they made from the feature. All of it, plus an additional percentage as punitive damage. Nobody said they should have their entire annual profit garnished, their corporate charter revoked, their CEO arrested, or their headquarters raided by the Wagner Group. Sheesh. The problem is that the threatened fine is nowhere near the anticipated profit. So there is a rational incentive to ignore the law.
- twblalock 4y ago> Nobody said they should have their entire annual profit garnished, their corporate charter revoked, their CEO arrested, or their headquarters raided by the Wagner Group. Sheesh. Read the other comments here and you will see a number of people saying those things should happen (ok maybe not the one about the Wagner group...).
- gtvwill 4y agoRemember kids. If the punishment is a fine not jail time it's only a law for the poor.
- asdff 4y agoSay what you will about capital punishment in singapore, but a caning hurts the same for a rich person and a poor person.
- Someone 4y agoIt’s such a small amount because it’s a small infringement (incorrect default for a privacy-related setting that was corrected, I guess fairly rapidly because of the height of the fine)
- asdff 4y agoThe thing is, when big things happen too its still not a very large fine.
- Someone 4y agoJanuary 4 (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/technology/meta-facebook-eu-gdpr.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/technology/meta-facebook-...): “Meta suffered a major defeat on Wednesday that could severely undercut its Facebook and Instagram advertising business after European Union regulators found it had illegally forced users to effectively accept personalized ads. The decision, including a fine of 390 million euros ($414 million), has the potential to require Meta to make costly changes to its advertising-based business in the European Union, one of its largest markets.” Even ignoring that it is including a fine, I would think $414 million is large enough for some fairly high-up managers at Meta getting flak for it.
- asdff 4y agoThe company makes like 30 billion in revenue for a year, they could certainly be bled a lot more.
- maddynator 4y agolol that’s like saying the fine for speeding is $.2
- ttoinou 4y agoIt's for the french market
- nakedrobot2 4y agoHow do they come up with these silly fines?
- 31337Logic 4y ago[flagged]
- Beaver117 4y agoImagine the fine for robbing a bank was $100
- asah 4y agoIt's actually more like $8.50 fine... ($100B annual income vs $100K personal income)
- gruez 4y agoWhen you rob a bank, you're presumably getting at least a few thousand dollars. If the fine were actually $100, then the ROI is on the order of 10x-100x. How much money do you think apple got for "illegally harvesting iPhone owners’ data for targeted ads without proper consent"? Do you think apple made $85M to $850M from it?
- atonse 4y agoWhat exactly did they do?? I’m very curious. I have this sick feeling that in the past year, Apple is experiencing a brain drain and again the assholes with the spreadsheets (the bozos as Steve Jobs called them) are showing up and starting to chip away at things like privacy or in-app purchases for an extra .5% of profit. My son was surprised to see an ad or in app purchase in an Apple Arcade game. But I still have to verify whether that’s what he saw. But the rest of the games on the App Store are so disgustingly sly in how they prey on their users to buy more more more. And Tim Cook doesn’t do anything while talking about curation. Where’s the curation?
- meindnoch 4y agoTim is the chief bozo to be frank…
- yreg 4y agoI don't think so. Yes, he led Apple to become a $1T company, but making money doesn't make someone a bozo alone. If anything compromises Apple products, in 90% of cases it's Apple's design philosophy or (stubborn?) ideals. Not a push from the spreadsheet bozos. For better or worse, I think Tim managed to keep the product side of the company very close to what Steve wanted.
- jhickok 4y agoOne of the concerns I have, and I believe Steve shared, is the dilution of their offerings. I'm frankly having a hard time navigating their iPad and Mac offerings. It isn't clear where each of their products sit, and it's certainly going to be very confusing to non-enthusiasts who have the grit to swim thru it all. Similarly, someone explain the 13in Macbook Pro? Why is it still here and getting updates? It seems to me that they are just making all possible combinations of their products, and Steve hated that.
- yreg 4y agoI'm with you on that, but it's very far from how bad it could be - just take a look at the other computer manufacturers. And the trend of making the product lineup more convoluted doesn't seem to be steep (it happens slowly and over time), so I'm not too worried. It seems there is time to steer it back before it gets too ridiculous.
- reustle 4y ago> In 2021, the company made $3.05 billion from ads in the US, and that figure is expected to grow to $4.24 billion in 2022, according to Insider Intelligence.
- bestnameever 4y agoOutside of the App Store, where does Apple display ads?
- MikusR 4y agoSettings.
- mabbo 4y agoThey have plans. Now that they've locked Google and Facebook out of all that app tracking data, they can make a killing off it.
- doctoboggan 4y agoApple News
- ccouzens 4y agoThe laptop setup screens that push you to iCloud. The toast that tells you to use Safari when using another web browser.
- warkdarrior 4y agoApple does not display ads in many places, but they make money by selling the data they collect to other advertisers.
- cute_boi 4y agoIn Settings, where they keep pestering me to install Apple Arcade or something like that.
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- Proven 4y ago[dead]
- NelsonMinar 4y agoEveryone's focussing on the small fine but the bigger story here is it's Apple. They've gotten the reputation for being the user privacy company, for protecting you from ad companies like Google/Alphabet or Facebook. Turns out they're acting like another invasive ad company themselves. The fine may not be big but the symbolism of it is.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoEh, this is a massive false equivalence. Yeah, it'd be really preferable if Apple didn't do ads. They also are the hot dog stand of ad vendors; everyone else is way, way bigger. The difference is so obvious: Apple Maps doesn't even associate locations or directions to your Apple ID. Google stores your location at five minute intervals. The difference in privacy attitudes is vast.
- sebow 4y agoYou're right, but in the grand scheme of things whataboutism is irrelevant. As per some analysis in a paper of this on android & iOS (the name of which i don't recall, but can search for it), the main difference between the collection is not that big: Google collects more quantity whereas Apple collects every kind of data, but not as frequently. People talked as if Apple did not and would not ever do such things, which was obviously false. Both companies profit by the fact that we keep pointing fingers in this sadistic duopoly and not look at the actual issue of privacy. I wished people showed more interest when in was more "fashionable" to talk of such issues, but back when snowden/assange/smaller individuals did it, the discussion always ended up with ad homiminems and irrelevant points directed to the messenger. The only difference between back then & now are the perpetrators: it used to be the governments, nowadays is companies (and governments colluding with them, which is arguably worse as corporations cannot be as easily held accountable).
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoThis behavior is expected from Google. Not Apple.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- robofanatic 4y agoWho is held responsible if a company gets fined or sued? Does someone get fired?
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoI think the only justification for the outrageously high pay CEOs get should be personal liability for corporate malfeasance. We should put CEOs in prison.
- null_object 4y ago> We should put CEOs in prison So in an obscure settings toggle, in one version of iOS that was immediately fixed, some developer probably unknowingly set a toggle default to a setting that contravened an EU law… and you think Tim Cook should go to prison?? I just finished reading a book where one of the chapters was about factories in north New York where the executives covered-up systematic leaking of dioxin into the local environment for decades. But sure - Tim Cook should go to prison to appease your Apple hatred.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoI'm responding from an iPhone, as it happens. I'm not super fond of Apple, but there are far worse actors out there. This specific case may not warrant prison, but CEOs are in a problematic space: They get massively well paid to make decisions that they suffer no ill effects for. They reap the rewards of success but do not face any repercussions if they do something wrong. They won't get fired, and they won't face penalty for illegal actions. Even if they make a decision that hurts the business financially, it tends to be other employees who get let go. We should hold CEOs personally liable for the violations of the law of their companies, because it's the best way to ensure CEOs are motivated to ensure their companies behave legally, not just profitably.
- pocketarc 4y agoCEOs being held personally liable might not fix anything - one goes to jail, the board hires the next. And before you say “CEOs just won’t agree to do risky things”, if they won’t, they get fired, and some other CEO will. Same as what happens with programmers that refuse to do unethical work. They’ll just get replaced. The company goes on as normal. The issue is harder to solve than “just arrest the CEO”. But I’d like to see it solved, too.
- boplicity 4y agoRant: I'm so sick of the Apple App store. It absolutely pales in comparison to app stores like Steam, Epic Games or GOG. On those stores, you can buy a license, and then use that license almost anywhere. (Except, of course, on Apple Devices.) These stores compete with eachother, so they also sometimes have very good deals. (Hello actually good free games from Epic.) On the horrible Apple App store, you buy a piece of software and you can only use it on some Apple devices. If a developer stops updating their software, odds are you'll no longer be able to use the software at some point in the future. Even worse, most apps are listed as free, but of course, they're not free. They charge you for them, but only in some way that is completely hidden to everyone who doesn't download and install the software. Either that, or they are free, but you're overwhelmed with huge numbers of ads. I've come to resent our overpowered iPad. I'd love to install games that I own on other devices, but Apple has chosen to make this impossible. That's extremely disrespectful to me, their customer. They sell me a device that is completely locked down. It's horrible, and in no way the dream of computing that almost everyone had when I was growing up.
- curiousgal 4y agoI'm always interested in knowing how they got caught but there usually does not seem to be any information about that.
- mrfox321 4y agoJust look at Apple's recent job postings. Here's one, but simple searching reveals the pattern: https://g.co/kgs/tV5rGG https://g.co/kgs/tV5rGG They need 1. Recommendation systems experience 2. Machine Learning 3. Auction theory 4. Ads pacing 5. ML / Reinforcement learning Gee, I wonder what they're scaling out...
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- JohnGB 4y agoWow, that's going to teach them a lesson! A whole $8.5M - That's literally only 23 minutes of 2022 revenue lost (I did the maths). I'm sure they will never do it again, despite the fact that they likely made way more than $8.5M from doing it. If we want companies to stop doing illegal things, then the punitive consequences need to be so high that they prioritise not doing it. If a person steals $100, they could spend a decent amount of time in jail for it. Time that is worth a lot more than then $100 benefit they received. Companies want all the benefits of being a "person", so let's apply the same principles to them.
- daveguy 4y agoIt will cause more damage to their brand than $8.5M ... Apple has been positioning themselves as "privacy focused" for years. They're obviously still better than Google in this respect, but it will hurt them more than $8.5M.
- eldaisfish 4y agoNo, this will not make a noticeable dent. Apple's branding and marketing are too powerful for that to happen. An obscure court ruling matters to people on HN. To the average consumer, it never happened.
- notatoad 4y agopeople like news stories that reinforce their perceptions, not news that tells them they're wrong. this isn't going to be widely reported on, because "you were wrong to like that company that everybody likes" isn't a nice story. if the fine was huge, it would be news. but this fine is an amount that's easily ignored, so it will be.
- Mikeb85 4y ago> They're obviously still better than Google in this respect Are they? Google is probably the most open company about what they collect and how they use it and I've never seen any evidence whatsoever that they ever sell you out ie. do more than simply link you to contextual ads. All their apps and services also ask for permission pretty explicitly.
- rib3ye 4y ago> Apple failed to “obtain the consent of French iPhone users (iOS 14.6 version) before depositing and/or writing identifiers used for advertising purposes on their terminals” Why is it so specific to that dot version?
- rib3ye 4y agoOk, I rtfa... >With iPhones running iOS 14.6 and below, Apple’s Personalized Advertising privacy setting was turned on by default, leaving users to seek out the control on their own if they wanted to protect their information. >The newer versions of the iPhone operating system corrected the problem, presenting users with a prompt before the advertising data was collected. So they fixed it without government pressure or not?
- gigatexal 4y agoApple getting into ads is not what Steve would have wanted. And all teh "well wall st." responses can stop typing because Steve didn't give an f about wall street.
- wintermutestwin 4y agoI don't use Stocks or News and I don't use the App Store for discovery so I don't see ads. I am fully bought into the Apple ecosystem. The second I see an ad, I am dumping all of it. Obligatory Bill Hicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0
- lostlogin 4y ago> The second I see an ad, I am dumping all of it. Where will you go?
- lucb1e 4y agoAndroid? I'm surprised every time I see an ad somewhere. TrackerControl seems to be an accidentally fantastic ad blocker (I got it just to block trackers) and it's super rare that an app doesn't use one of the known ad networks. It probably also helps to use apps from F-Droid whenever possible, which is surprisingly often (most of my apps are from F-Droid, some are stock like camera, dialer, and home screen, and then there's a couple like Spotify and NS/DB that are required for valid digital national rail tickets and I unfortunately can't get outside of Google Play).
- fxtentacle 4y agoYeah, I'm wondering, too. Android is a lot worse by design. I would love to use a Linux phone, but my bank's 2FA doesn't support any.
- jeroenhd 4y agoDepending on your bank, Anbox or Waydroid may help you run your bank's app on your Linux device. Probably a no-go for most banks, but worth a shot to see if it'll work. You can just try it out on a Linux computer/VM first, no need to actually buy a Linux phone just to end up disappointed.
- sobkas 4y ago> Depending on your bank, Anbox or Waydroid may help you run your bank's app on your Linux device. Probably a no-go for most banks, but worth a shot to see if it'll work. You can just try it out on a Linux computer/VM first, no need to actually buy a Linux phone just to end up disappointed. I use LineageOs and without Magisk magic I couldn't use contactless payments (still no Google Pay, but regional Blik contactless is good enough)
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago(2021)
- dang 4y agoArticle looks recent to me
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoI hastily misread the page. Where it says "How to Prep Your Apple Devices to Sell Them" in text-only browser, no HTML tables, this appeared right where a date for the article would usually be, and it looked like the date of the article was September 17, 2021. Sorry about that.
- fmajid 4y agoAny firm making more than zero in advertising revenue is automatically untrustworthy when it comes to privacy and data collection. Apple is no exception, and their stance is more hypocritical than most.
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- pensatoio 4y agoThis is a nothingburger. I'm surprised to see such shallow responses here. A giant company made a small regulatory misstep in one country. Laws change constantly, missteps likely happen all the time. It's a tiny fine for a small mistake.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rvz 4y agoPathetic fine. More like a tap on the wrist out of the millions Apple makes every day. Surely they are sorry and they won't do it again! /s
- NicoJuicy 4y agoTo all down voters and apple fanatics . Told ya 7 years ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10303190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10303190 "Think different" is just a slogan
- readingnews 4y agoWait up, I am not sure what the company worth is now, I keep reading two or three trillion dollars, so let me get this straight: Company valuation: 2*10^12 Your fine for some wrongdoing: 8.5*10^6 So, they were fined roughly 4.25*10^-6 (or 0.00000425) of their worth. This sounds like a pretty small fine. Not sure if that even stings, a little.
- reachableceo 4y agoI would wager they spend more than that a week globally on coffee and plastic ware in the cafeteria . Or other similar incidental expenses. This is nothing.
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- robocat 4y agoEquivalently every time you forget to pay for a parking ticket, and every other equivalent law infraction, you should be fined your total annual disposable income? Maybe with some punitive disincentive on top I guess. If you have a ten percent chance of being caught, then fine you 10 years of your “profit” seems a good appropriation. Just make it a year’s salary - that is a fair approximation that everyone would understand. You certainly would learn to pay more attention to the many thousands of minor laws you need to personally adhere to. Edit: I especially want to see some of those rich-ass software devs working for letters from ACRONYMS get taken down. I’m safe: I live in New Zealand and I can’t easily work at a letter of an ACRONYM.
- sensanaty 4y agoIIRC Sweden (or one of the scandis) does exactly that, a parking ticket is based on a percentage of your gross yearly wage (or something to that effect, maybe the sticker price of the car?) rather than being a set cost, since otherwise those kinds of fines disproportionally target lower income individuals while it becomes a small hassle that the wealthy pay off and forget about. Corporate fines should work similarly, any infraction no matter how small should be fined at a % of their cashflow. I think Apple, with their 2 Trillion(!!!!) Dollars can hire a lawyer or two to make sure they're not breaking any silly privacy laws, after all :)
- andrew-ld 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34272298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34272298
- atkailash 4y ago[dead]
- squarefoot 4y ago$8.5M is just expenses to Apple, as would be to many others; certainly not working as a deterrent. To give a figure of the money involved: Vizio made more profits during Q3 2001 by selling advertising and users data than by selling TV sets: $57.3M vs $25.6M. https://doctorow.medium.com/vizio-makes-more-money-spying-on-people-who-buy-tvs-than-it-does-on-tvs-themselves-fb5e40fdd21b https://doctorow.medium.com/vizio-makes-more-money-spying-on... Like it or not, users data is the new oil. I don't expect any related business to resist the temptation soon or later to jump to the dark side, if not because in a saturated market you either adapt or go belly up.
- squarefoot 4y ago> Q3 2001 That would be Q3 2021, of course. Too late to edit, sorry.
- SergeAx 4y agoNoooo, Apple, you can't take my personal data away from Facebook and Google just to sell it yourself!
- jononomo 4y ago$8.5 million ought to be enough to buy a couple of hundred iPhones.
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- sensanaty 4y agoAlways impressive and a bit saddening seeing the Apple shills crawl out of the woodwork when news like this hits the airwaves. What is it about apple that turns people into such rabid fanboys?