Apple Sued For Tracking Users Without Permission

The Cupertino-based tech giant, Apple has made a reputation for being a pro-privacy company, however, it has been accused of “collected “pervasive and unlawful data tracking” of users’ even when the user has turned of analytics sharing and personalized recommendations.

According to the Twitter account Mysk, which is run by some developers in Canada and Germany, “the App Store app on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple.” and “opting out or switching the personalization options off did not reduce the amount of detailed analytics that the app was sending.”

Mysk conducted the testing using a jailbroken iPhone running iOS 14.6 and later, the team discovered the same behavior with a non-jailbroken iPhone running iOS 16. However, due to the encryption on the latest operating system, Mysk could not determine exactly what data was being sent to Apple.

However, this behavior wasn’t limited to just the App Store as Gizmodo reported that several other apps, including Music, TV, Books, the iTunes Store, and Stocks all sent data to Apple despite opting out of analytics in the privacy toggles. It is pertinent to mention that Health and Wallet apps, however, did not transmit any kind of analytics data to Apple.

As a result, a class action lawsuit has been filed against Apple for violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act. The lawsuit doesn’t focus on the fact that Apple was tracking and collecting users’ data without their explicit permission, but it focuses on the settings like “Allow Apps to Request to Track” and “Share Analytics,” that give users a false sense of privacy.

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