Italian regulator rules Apple’s ATT feature limits competition

Italy fined Apple €98.6 million, ruling its App Tracking Transparency feature limited competition in the App Store.

Italy’s antitrust authority fined Apple €98.6 million ($116 million) for ruling that its App Tracking Transparency framework restricted competition in the App Store.

“The Italian Competition Authority has imposed a 98,635,416.67 euro fine on Apple Inc., Apple Distribution International Ltd and Apple Italia S.r.l. (hereinafter “Apple”) for abuse of a dominant position.” reads the press release published by Italy’s antitrust authority. “Apple breached article 102 of the TFEU in the market for the supply to developers of platforms for the online distribution of apps to iOS users. In this market, Apple holds a super-dominant position through its App Store.”

“The double consent request renders the ATT policy disproportionate, since Apple should have ensured the same level of privacy protection for users by allowing developers to obtain consent to profiling in a single step.” concludes the press release.

The Italy’s AGCM pointed out that Apple’s dominant App Store position lets it impose ATT rules unilaterally. The authority criticized the double consent prompts for developers as excessive and disproportionate, while Apple’s own apps get single-tap permission.

“the lack of proportionality of the ATT policy with respect to the achievement of the alleged objectives of enhanced privacy protection is confirmed by the body of evidence demonstrating that those objectives could have been achieved without imposing a mechanism requiring double consent – particularly burdensome for third-party developers – by allowing developers to obtain such consent in a single step.” states AGCM. “In other words, while fully supporting the objective of ensuring that users’ consent is full, free and informed, the Authority found that – also on the basis of the opinion of the Data Protection Authority – Apple could have achieved the same level of privacy protection for its users through means less restrictive of competition. This would have prevented the unilateral imposition of additional burdens on third-party developers, thereby avoiding the above-mentioned double consent requests for advertising purposes.”

Apple said it will appeal the AGCM ruling, reaffirming its commitment to strong privacy protections and stating the rules apply equally to all developers.

The IT giant launched ATT with iOS 14.5, which requires apps to get user consent to access the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) for tracking and targeted ads.

The Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is a unique, random identifier assigned by Apple to a user’s device. It allows advertisers to track user activity across apps and websites for targeted advertising while maintaining user anonymity. Users can reset or disable IDFA through privacy settings.

In April 2025, France’s Autorité de la concurrence fined the company €150M for abusing its dominance in App Tracking Transparency (ATT) consent practices on iOS and iPadOS between April 26, 2021 and July 25, 2023.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Apple)