The Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) is an independent French regulatory body that ensures that all the data privacy and storage laws are obliged by everyone. Recently, CNIL accused Google of breaking France’s laws related to online ad trackers or cookies. And an additional 35 million euros fine has been slammed on Amazon also. CNIL says that on the French websites of both Google and Amazon, the visitors are never asked whether they accept the ad-tracking cookies from the site or not? Similarly, the visitors are never given clear information about how their data is being saved and how the sites will use it later. According to CNIL, the French visitors of Google and Amazon do not get indications about how they can refuse to accept the cookies or how they can manage them otherwise.
Google and Amazon have three months to rectify their error, otherwise, a fine of 100,000 euros will be added to their already hefty payable amount for every day that they fail to comply.
Now, this is quite atrocious! CNIL has issued a warning that both the US Silicon Valley giants have three months to change the information on the banners that appear on their sites regarding the cookies. If they fail to do so, after the three-month deadline is over, 100,000 euros will start adding in their fined amount for every day they delay in complying with the regulatory body’s orders.
Google says that the French ePrivacy rules are constantly evolving and quite uncertain.
Google told Reuters that the company constantly upgrades its privacy information and provides clear controls to the users. Google upgrades its internal data governance regularly to ensure that the infrastructure remains secure and its products and services remain of utmost value. On the other hand, French ePrivacy rules and guidelines keep changing as they continue to evolve.
According to Google, this decision by CNIL under the French ePrivacy laws should look carefully into this matter because at the moment, they are just overlooking all the efforts that Google places to maintain its data privacy decorum.
Amazon is also refuting these claims by CNIL, and it also said that the company keeps updating its privacy practices to make sure that they never disappoint their customers and site visitors. The company always remains in complete compliance with the regulators of every country in which they function and provide their services.
Google is also being interrogated about its changing privacy plans for the handling of cookies.
A regulatory body from the UK is currently looking into Google’s plans to change its privacy settings on Chrome’s handling of cookies. It seems that Google is looking out to stop advertisers from using cookies and tracking site visitors when they move from site to site using the Chrome browser. Basically, Google is trying to provide more security to the site users by eliminating the current system of using third-party cookies. As an alternate, Google is introducing a new system called the Privacy Sandbox. Through this system, only anonymized feedback from the users will be obtained by the sites and this will not hamper their privacy concerns.
This is going to be a ‘cookie-less’ future as per Google’s plans, and it will still allow ad targeting and measurement, but it will also prevent frauds because the cookies will be replaced by around 5 APIs or application programming interfaces, which the advertisers will use to receive aggregated, anonymized data.
However, many small tech firms and publishers have issued their complaints to the Competition and Markets Authority citing the Privacy Sandbox technology would adversely affect their businesses.
The decision of the Competition and Markets Authority is pending as it has not yet decided if it will look into the matter or not. But hopefully, soon, news about it will come out and Google will receive a verdict if it should continue with its Privacy Sandbox plan or not, or how it can do so without damaging other smaller firms?
I’m Ava Paul, an experienced news website author with a special focus on the entertainment section. Over the past five years, I have worked in various positions of media and communication at World Stock Market. My experience has given me extensive knowledge in writing, editing, researching and reporting on stories related to the entertainment industry.
