The privacy watchdog in France announced on Thursday that it has assessed a penalty of sixty million euros (or 64 million dollars) against Microsoft, a leading technology company in the United States, for imposing advertising cookies on users.
The National Commission for Technology and Freedoms (CNIL) found that Microsoft’s Bing search engine had not implemented a system that allowed users to reject cookies as easily as accepting them in the largest fine imposed in 2022.
“When users visited this site, cookies were deposited on their terminal without their consent, while these cookies were used, among other things, for advertising purposes,” the French regulator stated after conducting investigations.
Additionally, it “observed that there was no button allowing to refuse the deposit of cookies as easily as accepting it,” as stated in the article.
The CNIL stated that the fine was justified in part due to the company’s advertising profits and the data collected through cookies, which are tiny data files that track online browsing.
The business has three months to fix the problem or face a possible additional penalty of 60,000 euros per day overdue.
The CNIL stated last year that it would conduct an entire year of checks on websites that don’t use web cookies in accordance with the rules. The CNI fined Google and Facebook 150 million and 60 million euros, respectively, for similar breaches last year.
