France slaps $64m fine on Microsoft

France's privacy watchdog yesterday said it has fined US tech giant Microsoft 60 million euros ($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 that after investigations 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."

Bing offered a button for the user to immediately accept all cookies, but two clicks were need to refuse them, it said.

The CNIL said the fine was justified in part because of the profits the company made from advertising profits indirectly generated from the data collected via cookies -- 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 euros per day overdue. The fine was issued to Microsoft Ireland, where the company has its European base.