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by Barry McIntyre on (January 16, 2023 at 2:00 PM)
France's data protection authority (CNIL) has fined TikTok UK and TikTok Ireland €5,000,000 for not informing users of their cookie policy and for making it difficult for them to refuse cookies, following similar such penalties as received by Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft.
The French data protection authority found that Google violated Article 82 of France's data protection laws, a national regulation that conforms with the GDPR framework enforced throughout Europe.
The fine was determined by the severity of violations by the company, including violating the rights of children and having to be warned several times by CNIL about not complying with France's Data Protection Act.
Tik Tok’s Violation of Article 82 of France Data Laws
Article 82 of France's DPA not only requires services to secure users' consent for the storage of cookies but also presupposes the users' freedom to give that consent. Hence, the cookie consent dialogs must offer a balanced approach to how the options are presented to the user, which wasn't the case on TikTok sites.
Despite CNIL's numerous warnings to TikTok, it took until February 2022 to implement a "Reject all" button and give it the required prominent position in the cookie consent prompt.
The second violation, also a breach of Article 82 of the Data Protection Act, is the insufficient description of the cookies' purpose on the banner. CNIL determined that users who clicked on the banner's link to learn more still didn't get enough details about this purpose.
Compared to other fines handed out to the social media and technology giants by CNIL, its lower, as Google received a $170m fine, Facebook $68M and Apple $8.5M
"These findings relate to past practices that we addressed last year, including making it easier to reject non-essential cookies and providing additional information about the purposes of certain cookies," a spokesperson for TikTok said.
"The CNIL itself highlighted our cooperation during the course of the investigation and user privacy remains a top priority for TikTok," the spokesperson added.
More Bad News for Tik Tok
However the bad news doesn’t stop with the fines handed out by CNIL, as Tik Tok has been banned by at least 24 states at the time of publication, and Congress also recently banned TikTok from most U.S. government-issued devices over bipartisan concerns about security.
TikTok, owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. Critics claim the Chinese government can access user data and U.S. armed forces also prohibit installation of the app on military devices.
Today Kentucky joined the list of growing states banning Tik Tok, and The Wisconsin ban was confirmed by Governor Tony Evers last week.