November 20, 2017 shows logos of US multinational technology
company Google displayed on computers’ screens. LOIC VENANCE
/ AFP
France’s CNIL data privacy watchdog said Thursday it had
fined two Google units a total of 100 million euros and an Amazon
subsidiary 35 million euros over advertising cookies.
The regulator said the fines were “for having placed advertising
cookies on the computers of users … without obtaining prior consent
and without providing adequate information.”
A cookie is a small piece of data stored on a user’s computer
browser that allows websites to identify users and remember their
previous activity.
The CNIL said when a user visited the website google.fr, several
cookies used for advertising purposes were automatically placed on
his or her computer, without any action required on the user’s
part.
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It said a similar thing happened when visiting one page on the
amazon.fr website.
CNIL said this type of cookie “can only be placed after the user
has expressed his or her consent” and thus violated regulations on
receiving prior consent.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
It faulted Google for providing insufficient privacy information
for users as it did not let them know about the cookies which had
been placed and that the procedure to block them still left one
operational.
CNIL also said Amazon had not provided clear or complete
information about the cookies it placed on computers of users until
a redesign in September 2020.
Google also stopped placing cookies on the computers of users
without consent in September, CNIL said, but added it still does
not provide a sufficient explanation for their use.
The regulator said “no matter what path the users used to visit
the website, they were either insufficiently informed or never
informed of the fact that cookies were placed on their
computer.”
The 35-million-euro ($42-million) fine is on the Amazon Europe
Core subsidiary.
CNIL imposed fines of 60 million euros on Google LLC and 40
million euros on Google Ireland Limited.
AFP