Administrative fine in the amount of 8 million euros applied by the French Data Protection Authority to APPLE DISTRIBUTION INTERNATIONAL for the illegally processing of personal data

The National Center for Personal Data Protection (NCPDP), for information and application purposes, communicates about the administrative fine in the amount of 8 million euros applied by the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) to APPLE DISTRIBUTION INTERNATIONAL for the illegally processing of personal data.

The CNIL carried out several investigations in 2021 and 2022, following a complaint concerning the ad personalization in the App Store, in order to verify compliance with the applicable regulations. The CNIL services found that under the old version 14.6 of the operating system of the iPhone, when a user visited the App Store, identifiers used for several purposes, including personalization of ads on the App Store, were by default automatically read on the terminal without obtaining consent of the subject concerned.

Following the investigations, CNIL found a breach of Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act and imposed a fine of 8 million euros on APPLE DISTRIBUTION INTERNATIONAL. The amount of this fine was established based on the analysis of the following criteria: by the scope of the processing limited to the Apple Store, the number of people concerned in France, the profits the company made from advertising revenues indirectly generated from data collected by these identifiers as well as the fact that, in the meantime, the company has reached compliance/adjusted such processing of personal data.

The NCPDP, as national supervisory authority for personal data processing, emphasizes the responsibility of personal data controllers to comply with the provisions of legal framework on personal data protection and to ensure that personal data processing operations are in accordance with the legislation in force.