Microsoft fined 60 million euros over advertising cookies in France

Paris:

On Thursday, the French privacy watchdog fined US tech giant Microsoft 60 million euros ($64 million) for imposing advertising cookies on users.
In one of the largest fines levied in 2022, the National Commission on Computing and Liberties (CNIL) said Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, had no system in place for refusing cookies, as if users accepted them.

At the end of the investigation, the French regulator explained that “when users visit the site, cookies are placed on the device without their consent, and these cookies are used, among other things, for advertising purposes”.

He also “found there was no easy button to decline accepting deposit cookies”.

CNIL said the fine was justified in part because of the profits the company made from advertising revenue indirectly generated from data collected through cookies, which are small data files that track online browsing.

An additional fine of €60,000 per day will be charged.

Last year, CNIL announced that it would conduct one-year checks against sites that do not comply with the Internet’s cookie use rules.

Google and Facebook were sanctioned last year by CNI for similar offences, with fines of 150 million and 60 million euros respectively.

(Aside from the title, this story was not edited by the NDTV staff and was published from a syndicated feed.)