The French Data Protection Agency has fined Google and Facebook companies this Thursday with 150 and 60 million euros respectively because of the “cookies”, the computer trackers they use for advertising purposes.
The 150 million euros (about 165 million dollars) taxes on Google represent the greatest fine to date in France for this company, which was already sanctioned with another 100 million euros (about 113 million dollars) in December 2020 by
The same reasons.
The National Commission for Informatics and Freedoms (CNIL) “has found that websites Facebook.com, Google.fr and YouTube.com do not allow” rejecting “cookies” with the same ease “that if the user decides to accept them, the
release.
Facebook and Google (owner of YouTube) have three months to correct this harmful imbalance for the user, so pain of paying 100,000 euros (about $ 113,000) for each day of delay, add the French Commission.
Google assures that it will change its policy after this new fine, in a statement sent to AFP.
“We are committed to applying new changes, as well as to work actively with the CNIL in response to its decision, according to the [European] EPRIVACY directive,” the American giant has indicated.
The “cookies” are small files that detect the sites that visit Internet users, which are then subject to supposedly personalized advertising messages.
This tracking is constantly denounced by consumer and Internet users’ associations.
The European Union approved a Regulation on personal data with stricter standards in 2018.
Users receive, when opening an Internet page, a warning to specifically authorize the use of “cookies”, to partially modify that use or simply so as not to accept it.
But the total rejection of computer crawling is difficult, criticizes the French cnil.
“Web sites Facebook.com, Google.fr and YouTube.com propose a button that allows you to immediately accept the ‘cookies’, while to reject them totally” several clicks are necessary, “explains the statement.
The French agency had given up to April 202 to the publishers of Web sites to adapt to European regulations.
In July, the newspaper Le Figaro was the first to suffer the consequences of this hardening, with a fine of 50,000 euros (about $ 55,000) because of the “cookies” used by the commercial partners of the rotary website.
The Commission recently warned that since April has sent notices to 90 Internet sites so that they modify their devices.
Amazon was also fined in 2020, with 35 million euros (about 39 million dollars) for the same causes.
