Microsoft fined US$64 million over advertising cookies by French regulator
- Users had cookies deposited on their terminal without their consent, with no button for refusing as easily as accepting them, watchdog said
- France has also fined Google and Facebook US$160 million and US$64 million respectively for similar breaches around their use of cookies
France’s privacy watchdog said on Thursday that it has fined US tech giant Microsoft 60 million euros (US$64 million) for foisting advertising cookies on users.
In the largest fine imposed in 2022, the National Commission for Technology and Freedoms (CNIL) said Microsoft’s search engine Bing had not set up a system allowing users to refuse cookies as simply as accepting them.
The French regulator said that after investigations it found 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.”
It also “observed that there was no button allowing to refuse the deposit of cookies as easily as accepting it”.
The CNIL said the fine was justified in part because of the profits the company made from advertising profits indirectly generated from the data collected via cookies – tiny data files that track online browsing.
Bing offered a button for the user to immediately accept all cookies, but two clicks were needed to refuse them, it said.
