France's privacy watchdog fined on Thursday US tech giant Microsoft €60 million for foisting advertising cookies on users, marking the largest fine imposed in 2022.
The National Commission for Technology and Freedoms (CNIL) said Microsoft's search engine Bing did not develop a system allowing users to refuse cookies just as accepting them.
The French regulator found that "when users visited this site, cookies were deposited on their terminal without their consent, while these cookies were used, among others, for advertising purposes."
It also "observed that there was no button allowing to refuse the deposit of cookies as easily as accepting it."
Furthermore, the CNIL indicated that the fine was justified in part because of the profits the company made from advertising profits indirectly generated from the data collected via cookies -- tiny data files that track online browsing.
Meanwhile, the tech giant has been given three months to rectify the issue, with a potential further penalty of €60,000 daily overdue.
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