Microsoft receives a French fine of 60 million euros for cookies on Bing

The French privacy regulator has fined Microsoft because users could not refuse cookies as easily as accept them. These are cookies on Bing that were used for advertising purposes. Microsoft must pay 60 million euros.

The CNIL investigated bing.com between September 2020 and May 2021. The supervisor concludes that Microsoft wrongly placed advertising cookies on Bing. When visitors came to the homepage, cookies were placed without permission. These cookies were used to create advertising profiles. In addition, the CNIL says that there was no direct button to refuse cookies. That made it ‘more difficult to refuse cookies than to accept them’. The CNIL says it took one click to accept cookies, but two to reject them. As a result, Microsoft would discourage users from refusing cookies.

Microsoft must pay a fine of 60 million euros for this. In addition, the company must also set up a new cookie consent screen in France within three months that allows users to block cookies in advance. If Microsoft doesn’t do that, it will have to pay 60,000 euros per day.

The fine will be borne by Microsoft’s Irish headquarters, although it is an offense for French users. The CNIL, France’s privacy regulator, says Microsoft has violated the country’s data protection law. That law arises from the e-privacy regulation. This is therefore not a fine for violation of the GDPR.