Italian Antitrust Regulator Says iCloud Terms Could Be Illegal

BY Chandraveer Mathur

Published 28 Sep 2021

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The Italian antitrust authority investigating Apple, Google, and others found fault with three key Apple iCloud conditions that the user must agree to before using the service.

Italy’s Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) issued a report that makes the conclusion of its investigations into Apple, Google, and Dropbox’s cloud service. The investigations were initiated last year.

The Italian Guarantee Authority for Competition in the Market noted its objections to how iCloud retains the right to change terms at any time, the degree by which firms try to escape liability, and the lack of transparency in data security.

The AGCM report also highlighted a little-known fact about iCloud. Translated, the report said that “If a device has not backed up to iCloud for a period of one hundred and eighty (180) days, Apple reserves the right to delete backups associated with that device.” This means that if one doesn’t use their iCloud account for six months, Apple could delete everything stored on the cloud including health app data records and device settings. The AGCM claimed that most users are unaware of this clause.

The regulator added that the contract terms for Apple, Google, and Dropbox are unfairly skewed in favor of the companies. Additionally, it argued that Apple users are not informed of how the company backs up user data to the cloud. Instead, iCloud users are simply encouraged to take their own backups as well.

The AGCM’s report concluded that Apple and other investigated companies have unfair terms of use which may be illegal. However, the report didn’t suggest any remedial action and did not even touch upon what the Italian regulator plans to do with the findings.

Apple has reportedly contributed to the investigation and commented on each of the aforementioned points. It claimed that its terms and conditions cannot violate the laws that define the extent to which the conditions apply. It added that the terms were changed only twice in five years, once solely to change the name of the company.

Previously, the AGCM ruled against Apple’s decision to intentionally slow down iPhones with chemically depleted or worn batteries.

[Via 9to5Mac]