Apple will face a class action lawsuit filed in California that accuses it of deceiving iPhone owners and continuing to collect a great deal of information through its own applications, despite users disabling tracking in their settings.

Apple's privacy policy is in trouble. A new class action complaint was filed last Friday in a Californian court. The Apple company is accused of duping its users and continuing to collect extremely detailed information from its own applications, such as the App Store, even though the tracking of activities would have been deactivated in the settings by the owner of an iPhone.

This contradiction with Apple's stated policy, which in recent years has placed great emphasis on privacy and giving users control over their own data, has been revealed by a study conducted by two independent researchers.

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The recent changes that Apple has made to App Store ads should raise many #privacy concerns. It seems that the #AppStore app on iOS 14.6 sends every tap you make in the app to Apple.????This data is sent in one request: (data usage & personalized ads are off)#CyberSecurity pic.twitter.com/1pYqdagi4e

- Mysk ???????????????? (@mysk_co) November 3, 2022

"Turning off the customisation options did not reduce the amount of detailed analytics the [App Store] app was sending," one told Gizmodo. The information gathered in real time would include the apps searched for, the ads viewed, as well as the device ID, the type of phone used, the screen resolution, the keyboard language, etc.

And this finding would not just stop at Apple's app shop, but would also include Apple Music, Apple TV, books, the iTunes Store and Stocks.

False promises from Apple

"The data that Apple collects surreptitiously is precisely the type of private and personal information that consumers want and expect to protect when they take the steps Apple provides for users to control the private information Apple collects," the lawsuit states, stressing that "Apple's assurances and promises regarding privacy are completely false" and that "there is no justification" for this "surreptitious collection.

The lawsuit, brought by Elliot Libman on behalf of himself and other affected consumers, was filed days before Google agreed to pay $391.5 million to avoid legal action in the US. The Mountain View company was in the sights of attorneys general in 40 states for continuing to collect geolocation data from users who had disabled the feature.

Source : www.usine-digitale.fr