France : CNIL sanctions Orange with a hefty fine for ads appearing as emails

Zero-tolerance approach towards Orange’s direct marketing practices. By Nana Botchorichvili of IDEA Avocats, France.

On 14 November 2024, France’s Data Protection Authority (CNIL) issued a fine of €50 million against Orange, France’s leading telecommunications operator, for displaying advertising messages in customer email inboxes without their prior consent(1).

Indeed, as part of its Internet, mobile and fixed phone services, Orange offers its customers an email messaging service (the Mail Orange service). Following investigations carried out in relation to this service in 2023, the CNIL found that Orange was displaying ads in customer’s email inboxes that were in the format of emails among the list of actual emails. More specifically, such messages were inserted between the actual emails, and although they were labelled as “advertisement”, without showing a date of sending, the name of the sender and the subject appeared in the same form as for actual emails. When clicking on the ad, the customer was redirected to the advertiser’s webpage. The CNIL considered that such advertising messages constitute direct marketing subject to the French anti-spam rules (article L34-V of the French Postal and Electronic Communications Code), which transpose the relevant provisions in this regard of the E-Privacy Directive (article 13). As such, their display required prior consent which Orange had failed to obtain from its customers.

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