Your iPhone protects your privateness—from everybody besides Apple, apparently.

France’s knowledge safety authority, CNIL, fined Apple €8 million (about $8.5 million) Wednesday for illegally harvesting iPhone house owners’ knowledge for focused adverts with out correct consent.

It’s an uncommon sanction for the iPhone maker, which has confronted fewer authorized penalties over privateness than its Big Tech rivals. Apple makes privateness a promoting level for its gadgets, plastering “Privacy. That’s iPhone.” throughout 40-foot billboards the world over. The French nice, although, is the most recent addition to a rising physique of proof that Apple will not be the privateness guardian angel it makes itself out to be.

Apple did not “obtain the consent of French iPhone users (iOS 14.6 version) before depositing and/or writing identifiers used for advertising purposes on their terminals,” the CNIL stated in a statement. The CNIL’s nice calls out the search adverts in Apple’s App Store, particularly. A French courtroom fined the company over $1 million in December over its business practices associated to the App Store.

“We are disappointed with this decision given the CNIL has previously recognized that how we serve search ads in the App Store prioritizes user privacy, and we will appeal,” stated an Apple spokesperson. “Apple Search Ads goes further than any other digital advertising platform we are aware of by providing users with a clear choice as to whether or not they would like personalized ads.”

You could not consider Apple as an promoting firm, however which will change within the close to future. Apple does a tidy promoting enterprise which can internet an estimated $5.4 billion this 12 months, in keeping with analytics agency Insider Intelligence. Apple exhibits adverts on plenty of its providers, together with the App Store, and stories counsel the corporate is in talks to carry adverts Apple TV. That advert enterprise is predicted to develop tremendously within the close to future. After crippling the Facebook promoting community with a strong iPhone privateness setting in 2021, Apple is within the excellent place to broaden its burgeoning advert empire.

Many of Apple’s adverts are focused, similar to those delivered by rivals the corporate is keen on criticizing. Apple exhibits you these focused adverts and collects the related knowledge together with your permission, although. But that’s the place Apple bumped into hassle with the French.

With iPhones working iOS 14.6 and under, Apple’s Personalized Advertising privateness setting was turned on by default, leaving customers to hunt out the management on their very own in the event that they needed to guard their info. That violates EU privateness legislation, in keeping with the CNIL. It doesn’t cross the Europe’s GDPR, although; the violation falls underneath the extra obscure ePrivacy Directive of 2002.

The newer variations of the iPhone working system corrected the issue, presenting customers with a immediate earlier than the promoting knowledge was collected.

“Apple has finally been caught red handed: the same companies that have been telling us how their products and services are forerunners in terms of data protection are blithely violating the applicable law,” stated Nicolas Rieul, president of Alliance Digitale, a French digital advertising and marketing commerce group, in a statement. “This is a real problem misleading and deceptive advertising on a larger scale, which we invite the French authorities to address.”

As Apple ramps up its promoting enterprise, the corporate is going through extra scrutiny for its less-than-perfect privateness practices. A latest investigation discovered that Apple collects analytics knowledge even when the corporate’s personal analytics privateness setting is turned off. Apple faces a class motion lawsuit over the matter, and Alliance Digitale’s Rieul advised Gizmodo his group is pressuring the CNIL to pursue regulatory motion as nicely.

Eight million euros is peanuts for a corporation that makes billions a 12 months on promoting alone and is so inconceivably rich that it had sufficient cash to lose $1 trillion in market worth final 12 months—making Apple the second firm in historical past to take action. The nice might have been increased however for the truth that Apple’s European headquarters are in Ireland, not France, giving the CNIL a smaller goal to go after.

Still, its a sign that Apple could face a much less pleasant regulatory future in Europe. Commercial authorities are investigating Apple for anti-competitive enterprise practices, and are even forcing the corporate to desert its proprietary charging cable in favor of USB-C ports.