Apple’s major iOS privacy update last year made it much more difficult for apps to track user behaviour outside of their own borders, but a new lawsuit claims that Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta continued to snoop through a workaround.
The complaint, which is embedded below and filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Meta circumvented Apple’s new restrictions by monitoring users via Facebook’s in-app browser, which opens links within the app. The proposed class-action lawsuit, first reported by Bloomberg, could allow anyone affected to sign on, which could include hundreds of millions of US users in Facebook’s case. In the lawsuit, two Facebook users claim that Meta is not only breaking Apple’s policies, but also state and federal privacy laws, such as the Wiretap Act, which made it illegal to intercept electronic communications without consent.
