Fines return, Google and Facebook are sanctioned in France for not respecting cookie rules

French data protection watchdog fined Facebook and Google for failing to respect local as well as pan-European cookie consent rules.

The regulator fined Google €150 million and Facebook €60 million for violating French law; this after investigations into how they present tracking options to search engine, youtube and facebook users.

This is a clear violation of the laws of the European Union as well as France, as both Google and Facebook do not offer an option for users to reject non-essential cookies as easily as the option they offer to accept all tracking.

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In short, the tech giants were using manipulative dark patrons to try to force consent.

A Google spokesperson mentioned Unocero:

Long-running complaints against Google and Facebook.

In addition to France, complaints against Google and Facebook over equally problematic consent issues continue to languish at the Irish Data Protection Commission.

However, the commission has been accused of slowing down in overseeing the data protection of tech giants and creating a bottleneck to the effective enforcement of regulation.

And, according to a TechCrunch text, Google and Facebook engaged in regional lobbying efforts to delay a planned update to the ePrivacy Directive that would have replaced it with a regulation.

Keep on track.

In the case of France, the regulator has been especially busy on this front; fined Google €100 million during December 2020 for removing tracking cookies without consent.

At the same time, it also cost Amazon 35 million euros, this same problem.