Very salty cookies. The American internet services company Yahoo! was sanctioned with a fine of 10 million euros by the CNIL, the French privacy watchdog, for several breaches relating to personal data, the authority announced Thursday in a press release.
Respect the choice of Internet users
On December 29, 2023, the CNIL sanctioned Yahoo! “for not having respected the choice of Internet users who refused cookies on its Yahoo.com site and not having allowed users of its Yahoo! Mail to freely withdraw their consent to cookies,” said in a press release the National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties, which had received 27 complaints on the subject.
Cookies are digital trackers placed by websites on the user’s device. They are used to identify them persistently, to save their basket of items or their preferences, and to offer them targeted advertising. Since the entry into force of the European regulation on personal data (GDPR) in 2018, websites are required to respect stricter rules to obtain the consent of Internet users before placing their cookies.
Google, Meta (Facebook), Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and recently TikTok have all been sanctioned by the authority for a total amount of around 400 million euros.