Apple Prevails in iPhone App Privacy Case

A California judge has once again tossed a lawsuit that accused Apple of producing devices that allow ad networks to track a user's app activity.

California district Judge Lucy Koh determined that the plaintiffs could not prove that Apple's policies caused them significant harm.

The case dates back to 2010, when the first of five separate lawsuits on this issue was filed in California. By Aug. 2011, the cases were all combined into one suit, but one month later, Koh threw out the case. She did, however, give the plaintiffs the option to revise their complaint, and the case dragged on for another two years.

Earlier this week, however, the judge ruled in favor of Apple, finding that the plaintiffs could not prove that they suffered harm as required under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, California's Consumers Legal Remedies Act (CLRA), and California's Unfair Competition Law (UCL).

"To have Article III standing, a plaintiff must plead and prove that he or she has suffered sufficient injury," Judge Koh wrote in her decision. "To have standing under the CLRA, a plaintiff must allege that she relied on the defendant's alleged misrepresentations and that she suffered economic injury as a result. Likewise, to establish standing under the UCL, a plaintiff must demonstrate that she 'suffered injury in fact and ... lost money or property as a result of the unfair competition.'"

Basically, the plaintiffs had to prove that "Apple misrepresented its data collection and privacy practices, thereby luring plaintiffs into spending more money for their iPhones than they would have had they known the true nature of the data being collected by Apple and the third party apps." The judge concluded that this was not the case.

The original suit, filed by Jonathon Lalo, cited a 2010 Wall Street Journal study that examined 101 mobile applications and found that iPhone apps distribute more personal data without the users' permission than Android apps.

The "leakiest" apps, according to the Journal, include Pandora, Grind, Paper Toss, and TextPlus 4, which sent age, gender, ZIP codes, and user IDs to multiple ad networks. The most commonly submitted information, usually sent back to either the app maker or sold to an ad network, is the phone's unique user ID number, which can give companies valuable information on what an owner does with his or her phone.