Cookie tracking: France will fine Google and Facebook

Cookie tracking brings important fines for Google and Facebook. They made it too difficult for French users to reject the tracking technology, according to the French regulator.

The cookie tracking violates data privacy rules

The Commission Nationale de I’informatique et Des Libertés (CNIL) prepares to fine the two giants. The fine for Google would be €150 million, while for Facebook would reach €60 million. The CNIL mentions that the two companies violated French data privacy rules.

Moreover, if the companies don’t solve the issues in the next three months, they should pay another 100.000 per day. According to the authorities, the decision applies to google.fr, youtube.fr and all the Facebook’s platforms in the country.

Only Meta reacted

A Meta spokesperson said that the company will “remain committed to working with relevant authorities.”

Also, it added that users have greater control over their data, with the cookie consent controls. The company mentioned that users have a new settings menu both on Facebook and on Instagram. From here, they can manage their decisions regarding personal data.

Facebook’s cookie consent controls were updated last September. Thus, the company built a settings menu for cookie consent management.

On the other hand, the search engine giant did not make any comment. Just a few weeks ago, CNIL fined Google another €100 million, for depositing cookies without users’ consent.

The investigation started in March, last year. The findings show that the website placed cookies automatically on their visitors’ computers. And this happened without any consent.

Advertising was Google’s main purpose

So, CNIL said that Google used some of the cookies for advertising purposes. Thus, they brought ”significant profits” for the giant. Moreover, google.fr’s visitors could see a banner on the bottom of the page. But this did not inform them about the already placed cookies.

Although users could deactivate the ad personalization, the website still kept one of the advertising cookies on the computers.

In September 2020, Google stopped automatically placing advertising cookies on google.fr. Still, the new information banner would not allow users understand the purpose of the cookies. On top of that, the website did not inform them that they could refuse those cookies.

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