On October 28 Patently Apple posted a report titled "A Coalition of Trade Groups in online Advertising including Le Monde, Google & Facebook have filed an Antitrust Complaint against Apple." The report noted that Damien Geradin, a lawyer at Geradin Partners who is representing the complainants, said: "While privacy matters and needs to be protected, privacy rhetoric cannot be used as a fig leaf to justify anti-competitive practices that will destroy the mobile ad ecosystem while benefiting Apple."

Three weeks later we've learned that Apple's Jane C. Horvath, Senior Director, Global Privacy, sent a letter to thank Dr. Jan Rydzak, Ranking Digital Rights, that works with a variety of researchers and affiliates based around the world to stop the abuse and exploitation of user information. Horvath thanked Rydzak for their support for Apple's coming iOS 14 permission feature known as App Tracking Transparency (ATT).

Horvath went on to explain the reasoning for delaying ATT to early 2021. Primarily it was intended to provide developers with the time that they indicated was needed to properly update their systems and data practices.

Further, Horvath further explained to Dr. Jan Rydzak that Apple developed ATT for a single reason: because we share your concerns about users being tracked without their consent and the bundling and reselling of data by advertising networks and data brokers.

It's at that point were Apple's Horvath took the opportunity to fire back specifically at Facebook who was first to criticize Apple's ATT and then helped organize the antitrust lawsuit against Apple.

Horvath stated that "… Facebook and others have a very different approach to targeting. Not only do they allow the grouping of users into smaller segments, they use detailed data about online browsing activity to target ads. Facebook executives have made clear their intent is to collect as much data as possible across both first and third party products to develop and monetize detailed profiles of their users, and this disregard for user privacy continues to expand to include more of their products."

For more on Apple's letter, read the full Scribd document below.  

Nov 19, 2020 Apple App Trac... by Jack Purcher