Apple has been sued for failing to comply with its user privacy obligations. This was reported by the resource The Register.
Filed in Northern California District Court on behalf of Plaintiff Julie Cima, Apple is accused of collecting data from iPhone owners despite the devices being set to not share information.
“Apple records consumer personal information and activities on its consumer mobile devices and apps, even after consumers indicate in their Apple mobile device settings that their data and information should not be shared,” the lawsuit filed on Jan. 26 says. “As a result, Apple collects and uses for its financial gain a huge amount of data.”
The lawsuit cites a study published last November by the Mysk development team, which alleges that Apple collects analytics data despite users blocking this option in iPhone settings. Shortly after the publication of the study, a lawsuit was filed against Apple in this regard, and another similar lawsuit was filed in court earlier this month.
As with previous lawsuits, Julia Sima’s lawsuit alleges that Apple misleads users with privacy promises in its marketing materials and published policies.
In support of this, the lawsuit cites Apple billboard slogans such as “Privacy. It’s an iPhone”, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone”, and “Your iPhone knows a lot about you. And we don’t.”
As noted by The Register, the discrepancy between marketing and reality is a frequent topic of lawsuits filed against Apple. In particular, the company has previously filed lawsuits due to a discrepancy between the screen size indicated in the advertisement and the actual one, as well as due to Apple’s exaggeration of the ability of its devices to withstand water.
The lawsuit alleges that “Apple does not honor user requests to restrict data sharing” and that the company monitors user activities, including how they find apps, how much time they spend browsing apps in the App Store, what they search for in the App Store, what App Store ads are viewed.
However, Apple can claim that it does not violate the privacy policy, since the receipt of customer data does not constitute a transfer of information to a third party.
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