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LONDON – French regulators on Thursday fined Google and Facebook a combined total of more than 200 million euros ($226 million) for not giving up as easily as people agree to online tracking.
The CNIL data privacy watchdog said their research has found that US online giants give French users a single button to accept cookies immediately, but there is no equally simple way for them to refuse as “a few clicks are required to reject all cookies.”
Cookies are code snippets used to target internet users for digital advertisements and other purposes. European governments have stricter regulations than the US, which require websites to ask for permission before tracking a user’s activity. This means that people encounter drop-down menus when they visit new websites, but there is a growing concern that many of them are configured in a way that makes it confusing or tedious if they don’t want to allow it.
The CNIL said visitors to Facebook, Google’s French homepage and YouTube were urged to say yes, which meant they did not freely consent, a violation of French data protection rules.
The French watchdog fined Google 150 million euros ($ 170 million) and Facebook 60 million euros ($ 68 million). It also threatened a daily fine of 100,000 euros if they did not make it easy for users in France to refuse cookies within three months.
Facebook, renamed Meta, said it was reviewing the decision and was committed to working with authorities.
“Our cookie consent controls give people more control over their data, including a new settings menu on Facebook and Instagram where they can revisit and manage their decisions at any time, and we continue to develop and refine those controls,” the company said.
Google said: “People trust us to respect their rights to privacy and keep them safe. We recognize our responsibility to maintain that trust and are committed to further change and working actively with the CNIL in light of this decision.”
Cookies have long been a source of privacy concerns as they can be used to track users over the internet. They can be used to save someone’s web browsing history to help remember someone’s website login details, or, more controversially, to target personalized ads.
The French penalty underscores a broader shift in the digital advertising industry, as market-dominated Google and Facebook and regulators in Europe and the US seek to phase out more gruesome data collection practices. Google has announced plans to phase out the so-called third-party cookies used by advertisers from Chrome browsers, but will still be able to track users of its own services.
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