Apple and Google ought to be investigated, said four Democrat legislators as they demanded the Federal Trade Commission look into the activities of the mentioned tech firms over alleged "unfair and deceptive practices" in collecting and selling consumer data.
Apple, Google Deliberately Facilitated Harmful Practices around User Data, Says, Lawmakers
According to a letter from the lawmakers cited by reports, both Apple and Google deliberately facilitated harmful practices in handling user information by creating advertising-specific tracking I.D.s into the operating system used by their consumers.
The letter involved Democrat senators and representatives, Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), Sen. Elizabeth Waren (D., Mass.), Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.), and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D., California).
"Apple enabled this tracking I.D. by default and required consumers to dig through confusing phone settings to turn it off," said lawmakers. They added that currently, Google still has not addressed this tracking identifier set to function by default. And even up until today, they still haven't provided users with an option to opt out.
It has become much easier for companies to identify a consumer persona using a dataset of 'anonymous' location records just by looking at the places they usually go to and where they stay for a long time. According to the lawmakers, despite efforts to address data privacy issues, the existence of identifiers is still allowing the unregulated data broker market to proliferate.
Apple, Google Also Under Fire in Other Countries
Apple and Google have also been in the crosshairs of other law enforcement agencies abroad in the past on matters beyond user data privacy protection. A UK competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), indicated in a former report that an investigation has to be conducted into the dominance of both firms in the mobile browser market.
The dominance of both Apple and Google in the market, or their 'stranglehold', shuts out rivals and dissuades innovators. According to Andrea Coscelli, chief executive officer of CMA, their dominance was pushing back the U.K. tech sector's development while at the same time restricting the options of users as to the applications that they would utilize.
Moreover, the CMA also stressed in a study they conducted that Apple and Google have effectively built a duopoly on mobile ecosystems, shutting out other competing operating systems, app stores, and web browsers on smartphones and similar devices. The report adds that their combined market share in the U.K. stands at about 90% already.
Without interventions, both companies are likely to entrench themselves deeper in the market and even strengthen their hold over how the sector's market performs. This situation will further restrict competition and limit incentives for innovators, according to CMA.
While it is already a problem how both tech giants get to amass a lot of data right now, it is another concern altogether as to how compromised their ecosystems are. Recently, a report from Google revealed that there are new tech firms right now that provide a market for dangerous hacking tools that target Apple and Android phones.
According to a digital watchdog Citizen Lab security researcher, the gravity and frequency of such attacks show us that even though these devices are popular enough and used by a lot of people, there's still a long way to go in securing them against powerful and insidious attacks.
Related Article: Google Finds New Spyware Designed to Attack iOS and Android Devices
