France’s privacy watchdog fined Google nearly $170 million and Facebook almost $70 million on Thursday for making it harder for users to refuse cookies — which store user information — than to accept them. The National Commission on Informatics and Liberty, or CNIL, also ordered Google and Facebook to fix that issue within three months or face daily fines of more than $100,000 from the restricted committee, the CNIL body that handles sanctions. “The restricted committee considered that this process affects the freedom of consent: since, on the Internet, the user expects to be able to quickly consult a website, the fact that they cannot refuse the cookies as easily as they can accept them influences their choice in favor of consent,” the CNIL wrote. That puts the two companies in violation of the French Data Protection Act, the commission said. On Facebook, YouTube and Google sites, one click can […]
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