The US Department of Justice sued Apple on Thursday for antitrust practices. The complaint accuses Apple of shaping its privacy and security practices in ways that benefit the company financially.
One passage in particular sticks out when the Justice Department calls Apple’s privacy and security justification a “elastic shield”:
“Apple uses privacy and security excuses as an elastic shield that can be stretched or contracted to serve Apple’s financial and business interests,” he says.
“Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security and consumer preferences to justify its anti-competitive behavior. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving principle that only Apple can protect consumers’ privacy and security interests.”
That’s not all—there are several other cases where the Justice Department believes Apple is violating privacy to degrade the customer experience:
App Store and app distribution
He also pointed out that Apple does not allow the creation and use of alternative app stores. However, it allows governments and enterprise customers to install secure app stores, the complaint notes. He also said that currently developers cannot offer a separate app store for children. In particular, some of them have partially changed with the enforcement of the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA). (Some of the changes only apply in the EU region.)
The DOJ pointed out that Apple allows users to easily load applications onto the Mac. Developers can also distribute apps with fewer restrictions on the platform, the DOJ argues. The Justice Department also made an argument about Apple’s restriction on “super apps,” which could be a better alternative to the App Store’s access to services.
Messages
The Justice Department also accused Apple of restricting third-party apps from receiving carrier-based text messages (SMS). He said Apple marks SMS as “private” in its API documentation so other developers can’t access it. Apple allows users to send messages to anyone by typing their number in the “to:” field of the Messages app, but with other messaging apps it’s not possible, the complaint states.
The plaintiff also argued that Apple makes iPhones less secure by not implementing encryption protections when iPhone users send messages to Android users.
Data Sharing Practices
The complaint also accuses Apple of using “vast amounts of personal and sensitive data” to distribute the app on its own App Store. He also pointed fingers at the Cupertino-based company for using user data for advertising.
Additionally, the lawsuit said that Apple has made deals with Google to make the latter’s service the default search engine for Safari, despite Apple knowing that there are better privacy-focused alternatives out there.
The Justice Department also made an argument that users had to share information with Apple to use a digital wallet instead of just sharing that information with a bank or medical provider.
Essentially, the Justice Department argues that Apple’s privacy and security practices are pretentious and the company is choosing “alternative courses” to protect its monopoly.
