Apple Fined $162 Million By French Regulators Over App Tracking Policy

French antitrust regulators have slapped Apple with a hefty €150 million ($162 million) fine over its controversial App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature, which is under scrutiny across multiple European nations. The French Competition Authority ruled that Apple’s implementation of ATT was "neither necessary nor proportionate" to its stated goal of protecting user data and unfairly disadvantaged third-party publishers.

In addition to the financial penalty, Apple has been ordered to publicly display the decision on its website for seven days. This ruling adds to the growing regulatory pressure on ATT, with ongoing investigations in Germany, Italy, Romania, and Poland. Apple introduced ATT in 2021 as a privacy safeguard, requiring apps to obtain explicit user consent before tracking activity across other apps and websites. If users decline, the app loses access to their advertising identifier, limiting targeted advertising capabilities.

Critics argue that while ATT is marketed as a privacy feature, it disproportionately benefits Apple by restricting competitors while allowing its own advertising services to thrive. The French watchdog found that ATT forces users to navigate excessive consent windows for third-party apps on iPhones and iPads, creating unnecessary complexity. Furthermore, Apple’s system requires users to opt out of ad tracking twice rather than once, a practice regulators say undermines the feature’s neutrality and economically harms app publishers and advertising service providers.

The ruling highlighted that smaller publishers, who depend heavily on third-party data collection for revenue, are particularly impacted. The French regulator initially refrained from imposing emergency measures in 2021 following complaints from the advertising industry but continued its investigation, ultimately leading to this landmark decision.