(AFP / JOSEP LAGO)
The computer giant has been penalized for not allowing its users to simply refuse cookies on its Bing search engine.
The Cnil (national commission for data processing and freedoms) has pronounced its most important amendment in 2022, against Microsoft.
The IT giant was fined 60 million euros by the commission because its Bing search engine did not have an option to simply refuse cookies, announces a press release released Thursday, December 22.
In its press release, the Cnil justified the amount of the amendment “by the scope of the processing (of data), by the number of people concerned and by the profits that the company derives from the advertising revenues generated from the additional data by the Cookies”.
The company is first sanctioned because French users of its Bing search engine cannot, until March 29, refuse all “cookies” without going through a tedious configuration.
The Cnil also identified the installation of two cookies without the consent of Internet users, while they served advertising purposes.
Google and Facebook sanctioned in 2021 for similar reasons
For these breaches related to the European ePrivacy directive transposed into French law in the Data Protection Act, the Cnil could impose a fine of up to 2% of worldwide turnover.
The restricted formation of the commission also ordered Microsoft to modify its practices on the “bing.com” site within three months, under penalty of having to pay a penalty of 60,000 euros per day of delay.
At the end of 2021, Google and Facebook had been sanctioned by the Cnil with a respective fine of 150 million and 60 million euros, for similar breaches.
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