Microsoft Fined $64 Million in France Over Advertising Cookies

France’s privacy watchdog fined Microsoft for not making it easy enough for users of its Bing search engine to reject cookies used for online ads, as part of a broader increase of enforcing Europe’s privacy laws. France’s data-protection regulator, the CNIL, fined a Microsoft subsidiary in Ireland 60 million euros, equivalent to almost $64 million. The company hadn’t—until earlier in 2022—offered users the option to reject so-called cookies alongside the button to accept them, the regulator said. Cookies are a type of digital identifier that websites can leave in web browsers, and which are often used to help target advertising. The regulator also ordered Microsoft to seek consent for another type of cookie that it places in web browsers for the purposes of detecting fraudulent views of ads—something the CNIL said wasn’t necessary to make the search engine function. If Microsoft doesn’t comply within three months, it could face additional fines of €60,000 a day, the CNIL said. France’s CNIL has been able to take on the cookie-consent issue because it is governed in part by an older EU law, the ePrivacy directive, which doesn’t include the same provisions to shift investigations to the country where the company in question is based.