In this era where the Internet has become inseparable from people’s lives, the protection of personal information has always been an important issue that relevant organizations around the world have to face, especially when more and more platforms collect users’ personal information without permission and use it for personalized advertising and other purposes. Just recently, Microsoft was accused by the French privacy protection agency, saying that they strengthened advertising cookies on their devices without users’ permission, and fined 6,000 for this. A fine of 10,000 euros.
According to a latest report from the “France 24” website, this penalty is specifically targeted at Microsoft’s search engine Bing. France’s National Commission for Technology and Freedoms (CNIL) stated in a latest statement that this engine does not actively provide users with any option to “reject” cookies, resulting in any user being directly judged by the system to accept these cookies during use.
The French regulatory agency, which strives to protect citizens’ personal information, said that whenever a user visits the Bing portal, the system will store cookies directly on their terminals without their consent, and the main purpose of these cookies is for advertising analysis purposes, allowing them to place ads on the website designed for the user. The National Information Freedom Commission then went further and stated that users have no way to refuse the placement of these cookies, which means that as long as they are used, it means acceptance, so it decided to formally punish Microsoft.
The decision on this penalty is related to the EU’s local “information protection law”. This regulation requires all websites to obtain the visitor’s consent before storing or retrieving information on any digital device. Since the main purpose of cookies is to track users’ online browsing history, any website that uses this technology (basically all websites) can fall under the jurisdiction of this regulation.
The National Freedom of Information Commission has recently officially launched a large-scale raid against large technology companies that break this norm. Just last year, the organization had already fined websites totaling 210 million euros for the same mistake of not allowing users to reject cookies and instead only accepting them, including search engine leader Google.
In response to the fine, Google said at the time that it would overhaul the way the site operates and claimed that it “will work hard to implement new changes and cooperate fully with the National Commission on Freedom of Information in response to this decision.”
As for Microsoft, which was fined this time, although the company has not issued any response or statement regarding this fine, the National Freedom of Information Commission still gave them three months to make improvements. If they still fail to achieve it by then, they will face additional penalties, and a fine of 60,000 euros will accumulate every day after the deadline.
Source: KOCPC Chinese