French telecoms company Orange fined for unsolicited ads

France’s largest internet operator Orange was, on Tuesday, December 10, slapped with a €50 million ($53 million) fine for sending unsolicited adverts resembling emails to customers.

Orange is the successor to France’s monopoly telephone operator and remains the leading telecommunications firm, with a popular email service.

“Internet access and email service provider Orange used its email service to introduce advertisements” that resembled emails in customers’ message feeds, said Louis Dutheillet de Lamothe, deputy head of France’s privacy watchdog CNIL.

Advertisers in France are required to obtain permission before sending material to a person’s email address, and the CNIL considered Orange’s actions were equivalent to that even if users’ addresses were not used to display the ads between their emails. The CNIL said more than 7.8 million users received the unsolicited ads. The CNIL “took into account the fact it was a breach that generated money” for Orange, Dutheillet de Lamothe told AFP.

Orange said in a statement to AFP that it would appeal against the fine to the top administrative court, branding the amount “totally disproportionate”. The advertisements represented “neither a breach nor a lapse in security but common market practice that did not involve any use of customers’ personal data”, it said. The company also said it had not received any warning about the matter before being fined.

The fine was unusually high for such a penalty – outside of those that have been imposed on major tech giants. Dutheillet de Lamothe said it should serve as a warning for other operators.

The CNIL also said the fine took into account that in November 2023 Orange changed its email interface to make ads clear to users.

It also found that Orange users who asked to stop receiving cookies – code that allows advertisers to track users’ activities on the internet – continued to receive them anyway. Orange was given three months to correct that problem or face additional fines.