This article was originally published by Stéphanie Marius.
Amazon is fined 35 million euros and Google is charged 100 million euros for violating French legislation on cookies.
"Formation restreinte" the Cnil's body responsible for imposing sanctions , found, following controls, that when a user visits the websites google.fr and amazon.fr, advertising cookies are placed on his computer without his prior consent. It also notes that the information banners displayed when browsing on these websites do not contain sufficiently clear information for the Internet user to know what these cookies are used for and how he or she can block them.
According to the CNIL, these two elements are breaches of Article 82 of the Data Protection Act: the law provides that we can only place advertising cookies if the user gives his prior consent, after being properly informed of what these cookies are used for.
As a result of these breaches, the CNIL's restrained committee imposed a fine of 60 million euros on Google LLC and a fine of 40 million euros on Google Ireland Limited, as well as a fine of 35 million euros on Amazon Europe Core.
Besides the fines, the CNIL requires companies to update their information banners within three months of notification of the decision. Failure to do so will result in a fine of 100,000 euros per day of delay.
Note that these obligations are prior to the new European regulation of the RGPD (which came into effect on May 25, 2018). For the new obligations resulting from the GDR, the CNIL published, on October 1, 2020, new guidelines and a recommendation on the use of cookies and other trackers. It asked stakeholders to comply with the new rules, considering that the adjustment period should not exceed six months. On that occasion, it nevertheless specified that it would continue to fully monitor compliance with the other obligations that have not been amended.