The entity in charge of privacy surveillance in France, the CNILhas imposed a fine Microsoft of 60 million euros for not providing clear enough instructions to users of its Bing browser so that they can reject cookies used for online advertising.
The sanction has been imposed within the framework of the commitment of the European regulatory entities for the reinforcement of the Data Protection Law of the European Union. The CNIL have stated that they have carried out several investigations into Microsoft’s Bing search engine. They did so in September 2020 and May 2021, and discovered that said browser displayed advertising cookies on users’ terminals without obtaining their explicit consent to do so.
Also, Bing was missing a button so users could just as easily decline cookies as accept them. According to the CNIL, to reject them it was necessary to give two clicks, while only one was necessary to accept them. Hence, among other things, the fine, which the CNIL justifies in part by the scope of the revenue that the company has obtained from advertising that was generated indirectly from the data collected through cookies.
Apart from the payment of the penalty, the CNIL has ordered Microsoft to solve the problem within a maximum period of three months. For this you have to implement a simplified cookie rejection mechanism. If you fail to do so, you may face additional fines and penalties to the value of 60,000 euros per day.
From Microsoft they have indicated that the company had already made changes to include a button for advertising cookies even before the investigations that have led to the sanction began. But they have also indicated that they are concerned about the CNIL’s requirement to obtain consent for cookies used for fraud detection. For now they have not decided if they will appeal this decision or not.
