If the allegations are correct, then Jobs' Mob seems to be having a little difficulty realising that Europe’s EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy law has anything to do with them. It had a similar problem when the EU insisted that Apple's hardware should be guaranteed for two years instead of one.

A customer asked Apple for the private data it had stored on them and was ignored.

This is not the first time Apple has had problems with users asking for data. The pathologically secretive company saw another investigation opened last year into how Apple processes personal data for targeted advertising on its platform and whether its privacy policy on the processing of that data is sufficiently transparent.

The Irish DPC has 20 investigations open into multinational technology companies whose European headquarters in Ireland put them under its watch, with Facebook under the most scrutiny with eight individual probes, plus two into its WhatsApp subsidiary and one into Facebook-owned Instagram.

Under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), regulators have the power to impose fines for violations of up to four percent of a company’s global revenue or $22 million, whichever is higher.