Microsoft Corp. was fined 60 million euros ($64 million) by the French privacy watchdog for the way it manages cookies on its search engine bing.com and was ordered to make them more customer-friendly.
Microsoft Corp. was fined 60 million euros ($64 million) by the French privacy watchdog for the way it manages cookies on its search engine bing.com and was ordered to make them more customer-friendly.
CNIL, France’s data protection agency, said it had conducted a number of tests on the website in September 2020 and May 2021 and “discovered that when a user visits this website, cookies are cookies.” were sent to his terminal without his consent, even though they were used for advertising purposes.”
The site also lacks a button that allows users to easily opt out of cookies, Cnil said, leading to the decision to penalize the tech company, according to a statement Thursday.
The latest penalty comes after a French watchdog investigation into companies’ compliance with new rules on cookies, which are tracking devices placed on people’s computers. Alphabet Group Google earlier this year was fined a record 150 million euros by France and Meta . Platform Facebook of Inc. were fined 60 million euros for the way they manage cookies.
“We have fully cooperated with CNIL and made significant changes to our cookie practices even before this investigation began,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We continue to be respectfully concerned about CNIL’s position on ad fraud. We believe that CNIL’s stance will harm French individuals and businesses by allowing fraud to spread online.”
CNIL has given Microsoft three months to comply with its order to make it easier to refuse cookies. The regulator said failure to do so would result in a €60,000 fine for each day of delay.
