French internet operator fined $53 million for unsolicited ads and tracking users without consent
French internet operator fined $53 million for unsolicited ads and tracking users without consent
How long has this been going on, and how much money have they made?
The amount of this fine was decided on the basis of the very high number of people concerned (over 7.8 million people having seen the advertisements in question in their inboxes), as well as the company's market position as France's leading telecommunications operator. The restricted committee also took into account the financial advantage derived from the breach relating to advertisements inserted among emails.
Yeah, I would additionally like to see fines be in units of revenue --- $50M means wildly different things to different organizations.
For these two breaches, the restricted committee decided to impose a sanction on ORANGE, which is composed of:
- an administrative fine of 50 million euros, which was made public.
- an order to stop reading cookies after the withdrawal of consent by the person concerned, within three months, with a fine of 100,000 euros per day overdue.
Not bad.
The ads looked like this (artistic render!):
They just can't help themselves.
Good, but a fine seems like they got off easy. Someone made the decision. Where are their consequences?
For context:
In 2023, the telecommunications company Orange generated around 17.73 billion euros in revenue in France. The revenue of Orange in the European country has fluctuated over recent years and peaked at around 18.5 billion euros in 2020.
Beats u.solicited dick pics I guess.