❗️France public broadcaster drops Israeli firm from political program project over data concerns

France Televisions scrapped plans to work with Israeli company Terrific on an interactive platform for the relaunch of France 2's political program "L'heure de verite" after concerns were raised over the handling of viewers' personal data, French investigative outlet Mediapart reports.

The platform, called Agora, was intended to allow viewers to submit questions to presidential candidates and participate in live polls when the program returns on 8 October. According to Mediapart, the project could have involved collecting data on the political preferences of users of France Televisions' Franceinfo website.

Terrific CEO Israel Grintz also co-founded a company in 2018 that markets political campaign targeting tools, the outlet said.

France Televisions ultimately handed the project to its own technical teams, saying tests conducted by its editorial and technical departments had not produced conclusive results. Mediapart also reported concerns over Terrific's Shoppable advertising tool, which was removed from the France.tv platform on 3 September after users said antivirus software had flagged phishing and personal-data risks.

France Televisions' technical teams found that the tool collected information including a unique identifier, visited page URLs and content metadata that could be used to build user profiles.