US Lawmakers Call on FTC to Investigate Apple and Google Over Ad-Identifiers

27 JUNE 2022 - Hours ahead of last week’s abortion ruling by the Supreme Court, four lawmakers called on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate Apple and Google over mobile tracking. The Wall Street Journal (via Apple News+) had a letter from Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.); Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.); Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.); and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D., Calif.) asking the FTC to:

…investigate Apple and Google for engaging in unfair and deceptive practices by enabling the collection and sale of hundreds of millions of mobile phone users’ personal data. These two companies knowingly facilitated these harmful practices by building advertising-specific tracking IDs into their mobile operating systems.

While the letter does acknowledge the ability for consumers to “opt-out” of such data collection today, the lawmakers argue that that’s a relatively recent change for iOS and Android. Quoting the letter again:

By failing to warn consumers about the predictable harms that would result by using their phones with the default settings that these companies chose, Apple and Google enabled governments and private actors to exploit advertising tracking systems for their own surveillance and exposed hundreds of millions of Americans to serious privacy harms.

As for what this means in the wake of last week’s SCOTUS ruling, the lawmakers argued that:

…individuals seeking abortions and other reproductive healthcare will become particularly vulnerable to privacy harms, including through the collection and sharing of their location data. Data brokers are already selling, licensing, and sharing the location information of people that visit abortion providers to anyone with a credit card. Prosecutors in states where abortion becomes illegal will soon be able to obtain warrants for location information about anyone who has visited an abortion provider. Private actors will also be incentivized by state bounty laws to hunt down women who have obtained or are seeking an abortion by accessing location information through shady data brokers.

You know, as long as they’ve got the FTC’s attention, maybe the lawmakers could call for an investigation of, what they themselves call, “shady data brokers?” Also - kind of bummed that the same group of lawmakers didn’t call on the FTC to investigate Facebook, Snap, and other services and developers for actively trying to work around the protections Apple added with App Tracing Transparency.

Maybe that’s coming in a follow-up letter.