Illegal Data Collection?
In early January, France’s data protection authority, the CNIL, fined Apple $8.5 million for illegally harvesting iPhone owners’ data for targeted ads without proper consent.
According to the CNIL, Apple did not “obtain the consent of French iPhone users (iOS 14.6 version) before depositing and/or writing identifiers used for advertising purposes on their terminals.”
The CNIL’s case unveiled interesting details about the company’s targeted ad program, as reported in the ad industry blog MobileDevMemo. Apple uses a unique ID number tied to your iCloud account called a DSID to sort you into a special segment used for ad targeting, attaching it to information about your location, age, and gender. (The DSID the same one the Mysk researchers saw transmitted in analytics data that Apple swears is anonymous.)
The company also harnesses a separate ID number that’s only for ads called the iADID, and another that’s specifcally meant to tie your activity together across all the different devices you use. Every time you see an ad on an Apple product or service, it seems that this data is sent back and fourth.
