France fines Microsoft $64 million over advertising cookies

On Thursday, France's privacy watchdog said it fined US tech giant Microsoft €60 million ($64 million) for foisting advertising cookies on users.

In the largest fine imposed in 2022, the National Commission for Technology and Freedoms (CNIL) said that 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 that the fine was justified, partly because of the profits the company made from advertising profits indirectly generated from the data collected via cookies, which are tiny data files that track online browsing.

The company has been given three months to rectify the issue, with a potential further penalty of €60,000 per day overdue.

Last year, the CNIL said it would carry out a year of checks against sites not following the rules on using web cookies.

Last year, Google and Facebook were sanctioned by the CNIL with fines of €150 million and €60 million respectively for similar breaches.

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