Jan 07, 2022, 00:40 am
French regulators on Thursday fined Google and Facebook a total of more than €200 million for not making it as easy for people to opt out of online tracking as it is for them to accept it.
The CNIL data privacy watchdog said its investigations found that while the US online giants gave French users a single button to immediately accept cookies, there wasn't an equally simple way for them to decline because "several clicks are required to refuse all cookies".
Cookies are snippets of code used to target internet users for digital ads and other purposes. European governments have stricter regulations than the US that require websites to ask for permission before tracking a user's activity.
The French watchdog slapped Google with a €150 million penalty and Facebook with a €60 million fine. It also threatened daily fines of €100,000 if they don’t make it simpler for users in France to refuse cookies within three months.
Cookies have been a longstanding source of privacy concerns because they can be employed to track users across the internet. They can be used to help remember someone’s website log-in details or more controversially, to record someone’s web-browsing history to target personalized ads.
The French penalty underscores a broader shift in the digital ad industry as Google and Facebook, which dominate the market, and regulators in Europe and the U.S. work on phasing out more egregious data collection practices. Google has announced plans to phase out so-called third-party cookies used by advertisers from its Chrome browsers, though it will still be able to track users of its own services.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/01/06...t-controls
The CNIL data privacy watchdog said its investigations found that while the US online giants gave French users a single button to immediately accept cookies, there wasn't an equally simple way for them to decline because "several clicks are required to refuse all cookies".
Cookies are snippets of code used to target internet users for digital ads and other purposes. European governments have stricter regulations than the US that require websites to ask for permission before tracking a user's activity.
The French watchdog slapped Google with a €150 million penalty and Facebook with a €60 million fine. It also threatened daily fines of €100,000 if they don’t make it simpler for users in France to refuse cookies within three months.
Cookies have been a longstanding source of privacy concerns because they can be employed to track users across the internet. They can be used to help remember someone’s website log-in details or more controversially, to record someone’s web-browsing history to target personalized ads.
The French penalty underscores a broader shift in the digital ad industry as Google and Facebook, which dominate the market, and regulators in Europe and the U.S. work on phasing out more egregious data collection practices. Google has announced plans to phase out so-called third-party cookies used by advertisers from its Chrome browsers, though it will still be able to track users of its own services.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/01/06...t-controls