The Conseil d’Etat, France’s supreme administrative court, said on Friday that it upholds a decision by a regulator to fine Google 100 million euros for breaches connected to its cookies policy.
The fine, which was issued by France’s CNIL data protection authority, was found to be proportionate, according to the court’s statement.
Google’s demand to annul the decision was shot down by the Conseil d’Etat. When the fine was issued, Google said “In accordance with the expectations of internet users, we are committed to implementing new changes, as well as to working actively with CNIL in response to its decision.”
CNIL is taking this very seriously
The French watchdog, CNIL, fined both Facebook and Google a combined 210 million euros over their use of cookies earlier this January. The watchdog said that the companies were making it difficult for internet users to reject online trackers.
Consent for the use of cookies forms the fundamentals of the EU’s data privacy regulations and is a major priority for the French watchdog,
The firms were then given three months to comply with the orders or face a penalty of 100,000 euros for every day delayed after the deadline.
Repeat-offenders
Cookies are the little packets of data that allow browsers to store information about people so they can be targeted by ads or have an easy time logging into a frequently-visited site.
Karin Kiefer, CNIL’s head of data protection and sanctions, said, when the watchdog fined Google, that accepting cookies takes just one click. Kiefer argued that the cookies should be just as easy to reject as they are to accept.
As usual, both companies gave statements defending their arguably selfish choice to make cookies harder to reject. If the cookies go, the information collected does too and ad revenues would go down. If it makes money, the companies do it. If it doesn’t, they appeal against fines and try to placate everyone with platitudes about how much they care. Hopefully, more can be done to keep big tech in check.
14 hours ago
