The US tech giant Microsoft has been penalized 60 million euros ($64 million) by France’s privacy authorities for forcing advertising cookies on customers. The National Commission for Technology and Freedoms (CNIL), which levied the biggest fine in 2022, claimed that Microsoft’s search engine Bing did not have a framework in place that allowed users to reject them as easily as accepting them.
According to the French authority, investigations revealed that “when users visited this site, cookies were deposited on their terminal without their consent, while these cookies were used, among others, for advertising purposes.”
The report “observed that there was no button allowing to refuse the deposit of cookies as easily as accepting it.”
The fine, according to the CNIL, was justified in part by the company’s advertising profits that were made as a result of cookies, which are small data files used to track online activity.
Bing stated that users could accept all cookies instantly by clicking a button, but that rejecting them required two clicks.
The business has three months to fix the problem or face an additional fine of 60,000 euros per day late.
In a statement, Microsoft said that it had “introduced key changes to our cookie practices even before this investigation started.”
“We continue to respectfully be concerned with the CNIL’s position on advertising fraud,” it said, adding that it believes the French watchdog’s “position will harm French individuals and businesses.
Cookies Control
When a user visits a website, cookies are downloaded to their computer, enabling web browsers to store information about the user’s session.
They are incredibly useful for internet platforms because they allow for the personalization of advertising, which is the main source of income for companies like Facebook and Google.
However, privacy advocates have long resisted.
Due to new regulations imposed by the European Union’s 2018 personal data law, internet service providers are now required to obtain users’ agreement before installing cookies.
The CNIL announced last year that it would review websites for a year to see if they were utilizing web cookies according to the laws.
For identical violations involving their usage of cookies, Google and Facebook were penalized by the French authority with fines of 150 million and 60 million euros, respectively.
The two businesses are also under investigation for their practice of transmitting the personal information of EU citizens to servers in the US.
