Google and Facebook face massive fines from France over the Big Tech companies’ tracking of user data.
France’s data privacy watchdog Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertes announced Thursday that it had fined Google for 150 million euros ($170 million) over its handling of online trackers on its website, also known as cookies. Facebook also faces a fine of 60 million euros ($67 million) for its handling of online trackers.
The watchdog gave both companies a three-month deadline “to provide internet users located in France with a means of refusing cookies as simple as the existing means of accepting them, in order to guarantee their freedom of consent,” according to a statement issued by CNIL. If the companies failed to comply with the watchdog’s orders, they would face a fine of 100,000 euros per day.
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Google said it intended to comply with the watchdog’s orders.
“People trust us to respect their right to privacy and keep them safe. We understand our responsibility to protect that trust and are committing to further changes and active work with the CNIL in light of this decision,” a Google spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
Meta, which owns Facebook, also said it was “committed to working with relevant authorities.”
“Our cookie consent controls provide people with greater control over their data, including a new settings menu on Facebook and Instagram where people can revisit and manage their decisions at any time, and we continue to develop and improve these controls,” a Meta spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
Cookies are small files that websites use to store a user’s online activity. These can include previously visited websites, search terms, or relevant ads. Many websites will ask visitors for permission to record that information upon the first visit.
CNIL says Google’s search engine and the streaming platform YouTube, which Google owns, have not made it simple enough to remove these cookies if a user chooses to do so. This breaches Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act, which requires websites to have the ability to opt out of cookies that track their users’ activities easily.
The French watchdog has penalized Google in the past for issues involving privacy. The watchdog fined Amazon and Google more than $163 million over their cookies practices in 2020, saying that both companies had not provided enough information about how they used user data for advertising purposes. A CNIL spokesperson said the issues were resolved after the initial fine.
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France’s competition watchdog fined Google 220 million euros ($268 million) in June, saying that the company’s practices hurt its competitors.
