France fines Google, Amazon €135m total for slipping ad cookies into people's computers

Found on The Register on Friday, 25 December 2020
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Google and Amazon have been slapped with €100m and €35m fines respectively after France’s data privacy watchdog declared both companies had placed advertising cookies on people’s computers without their consent.

NIL also said they failed to provide clear explanations disclosing what the cookies were being used for and how users could opt-out, beyond generic messages, specifically Amazon’s “By using this website, you accept our use of cookies allowing us to offer and improve our services,” and Google’s “Privacy reminder from Google” with two buttons labeled “Remind me later” and “Access now”.

Now that's a good start. Let's hope other countries follow to tackle all the profiling and data collection.