Microsoft has just been fined 60 million euros in France. Required by the CNIL, this aims to punish the Redmond firm for mismanagement of cookies on its Bing search engine. As often, it is much more difficult to refuse them than to accept them.
It’s not often that Microsoft is fined in France — at least not as often as its competitors. However, the Redmond firm is guilty of the same shortcomings as the latter, believes the CNIL. Since the implementation of the GDPR in Europe, the regulatory body has made it a point of honor that large groups make life easier for users when they refuse to be tracked.
Of course, this is still far from being the norm. However, when the CNIL watches over the grain, it can hurt a lot. In a press release on December 22, the Commission therefore announced that it had imposed a fine of 60 million euros on Microsoft following a complaint concerning the deposits of cookies on Bing, its search engine. The CNIL accuses the giant of not offering a button offering to directly refuse these, while it is of course possible to accept them in one click.
On the same subject: The CNIL fines Free €300,000 for failing to secure user data
The CNIL punishes Microsoft for its dishonest use of cookies
The organization specifies that it has calculated “this amount by the scope of the processing, by the number of data subjects and by the profits that the company derives from the advertising revenue indirectly generated from the data collected by the cookies”. In addition, this fine is reminiscent of the one imposed on Facebook at the beginning of the year, of exactly the same amount and for the same reasons. Google was fined 100 million euros.
Finally, the CNIL requires Microsoft to add an option to its search engine to collect users’ consent to the deposit of cookies on their device. The Redmond firm has three months to comply with this request, under penalty of having to pay a fine of 60,000 euros per day of delay. If you use Bing, you have been warned.
Source: CNIL