CNIL (Commission Nationale Informatique & Libertés) is the French National Data Protection Authority that has been advised to slam Apple with a 6 million euro fine for breach of user data.
Although the watchdog (CNIL) is not obligated to accept its top advisor’s recommendation, it will greatly impact its final decision.
Francois Pellegrini is the top CNIL advisor investigating Apple’s iOS 14 data breach case. The case was against the said version of the iPhone software, which asked users to allow third-party applications to track a key identifier.
However, under this one consent, the iPhone maker targeted their own ads at users, which constitutes a breach of privacy under the European Union’s ePrivacy directive.
France Digitale was the complainant that found the alleged breach of privacy on Apple’s part.
Moreover, Pallegerini has mentioned that the latest iOS 15 of the iPhone clearly asks users for their consent for collecting the key identifier, which was not the case in the previous version of the software.
This comes after the series of fines slammed against big tech giants by the European Union for breaching user privacy. In November, the Tech Unicorn Meta faced a whopping €265m from the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) over a privacy breach.
