Company has been given three months to rectify the issue, with a potential further penalty of €60,000 per day overdue. Reuters
Company has been given three months to rectify the issue, with a potential further penalty of €60,000 per day overdue. Reuters
Company has been given three months to rectify the issue, with a potential further penalty of €60,000 per day overdue. Reuters
Company has been given three months to rectify the issue, with a potential further penalty of €60,000 per day overdue. Reuters

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Europe

France fines Microsoft €60 million over advertising cookies

Search engine Bing did not allow users to refuse trackers simply enough, watchdog says

The National

December 22, 2022

  • English
  • Arabic

France's privacy watchdog said on Thursday it had fined US tech giant Microsoft €60 million ($64 million) for foisting advertising cookies on users.

In the largest fine imposed in 2022, the National Commission for Technology and Freedoms (CNIL) said Microsoft's search engine Bing had not set up a system allowing users to refuse cookies as simply as accepting them.

The French regulator said it 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.”

The CNIL said the fine was justified in part because of advertising profits indirectly generated from the data collected via cookies, which are tiny data files that track online browsing.

The company has been given three months to rectify the issue, with a potential further penalty of €60,000 per day overdue.

Last year the CNIL said it would carry out a year of checks against sites not following the rules on using web cookies.

Google and Facebook were sanctioned last year by the CNIL with fines of €150 million and €60 million respectively for similar breaches.

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While you're here
The more serious side of specialty coffee

While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.

The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.

Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”

One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.

Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms. 

Updated: December 22, 2022, 11:02 AM
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