Two years after having sanctioned Amazon with a fine of 35 million euros, the decision pronounced by the National Commission for Information and Liberties (CNIL) has been validated by the state CouncilJune 27, 2022. Amazon had been sentenced for placing advertising cookies on the computers of users of its e-commerce platform, without offering them the possibility of refusing them.
The CNIL does not hesitate to impose fines for violation of the cookie regulations
Since the deliberations of September 17, 2020 issued by the CNIL, users must be informed in a clear and concise manner about the purpose of cookies. In addition, Internet users must be able to refuse the deposit of these cookies in one click. These two directives fall directly under article 82 of the Data Protection Act transposing the European directive on privacy (ePrivacy).
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For not having scrupulously followed these rules, Amazon received a substantial fine from the CNIL. The e-commerce giant is not the only one to have been fined for non-compliance with this new regulation. Facebook and Google were fined tens of millions of euros for the same reasons. In total, nearly twenty sites have been suspended and around 90 organizations pinned down by the CNIL for having violated the rules on cookies.
After Google, Amazon sees its fine imposed by the CNIL confirmed
At the beginning of this year 2022, Google saw the Council of State confirm the fine imposed by the CNIL in 2020 in the amount of 100 million euros. The Mountain View firm had requested the Council of State hoping that it could cancel the payment of this fine. This is not the case since Google has indeed paid this sum. And now it’s Amazon’s turn to get its hands on the wallet.
Referring to the decision taken in the case of Google, the Council of State has ” confirmed the competence of the CNIL to take sanctions on cookies outside the single window mechanism provided for by the GDPR […] even if the data controller is not established in France “. According to the administrative authority, the amount of the fine imposed by the CNIL is not disproportionate with regard to the seriousness of the breaches, the scope of the processing and the financial capacity of the company “. Amazon’s appeal is rejected and the firm will soon have to pay the amount claimed.