This month I want to highlight a CNIL fine, Cookies: the CNIL fines GOOGLE a total of 150 million euros and FACEBOOK 60 million euros for non-compliance with French legislation. The CNIL (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés) is an independent French administrative regulatory body whose mission is to ensure that data privacy law is applied to the collection, storage, and use of personal data. On January 6th, Google and Facebook were fined because their websites made it easy to accept all cookies with one click, but there was no equivalently easy way to reject all cookies. This fine is another step towards ensuring customers are in control of their data privacy. As customers ourselves, we often interact with product experiences designed to achieve a specific outcome, but for data privacy this is becoming less acceptable, and now a fineable offense. I like to use this event as a reminder that the delight of our customers is our primary concern, and we must keep the bar high when evaluating customer experiences in all areas of our product, including cookie management.

https://www.cnil.fr/en/cookies-cnil-fines-google-total-150-million-euros-and-facebook-60-million-euros-non-compliance

“Following investigations, the CNIL noted that the websites facebook.com, google.fr and youtube.com do not make refusing cookies as easy as to accept them. It thus fines FACEBOOK 60 million euros and GOOGLE 150 million euros and orders them to comply within three months.”