TikTok fined $5.4 million in France over online cookies

The French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) announced on Thursday that it has fined short-form video platform TikTok $5.4 million (€5 million) over its website cookies. (via TechCrunch)

The privacy watchdog said that the company breached the EU rules by not offering users an easy way to reject its website cookies and not informing them enough about why it collects and uses those cookies.

“During the check carried out in June 2021, the CNIL noted that while the companies TikTok United Kingdom and TikTok Ireland did offer a button allowing cookies to be accepted immediately, they did not put in place an equivalent solution (button or other) to allow the Internet user to refuse their deposit just as easily. Several clicks were necessary to refuse all cookies, against only one to accept them,” the CNIL said in a press release.

In addition, the company didn’t inform users about the purposes of cookies ‘’in a sufficiently precise manner’’, the watchdog added.

Following the announcement, a spokesperson for TikTok said: “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.The CNIL itself highlighted our cooperation during the course of the investigation and user privacy remains a top priority for TikTok.’’

Last week, the CNIL also fined tech giant Apple €8 million ($8,485 million) for collecting user data by default to show personalized App Store ads.