EU ePrivacy Law

France is being very aggressive over enforcing the silly EU cookie law that nags and trains internet users to blindly click on website popups.

By announcing fines of euro 150 million for Google and euro 60 million for Facebook, the French privacy watchdog CNIL went much further than other EU data protection censors have gone to rein in the trackers, which allow advertisers to target people with tailored ads as they move around the internet.

Under the e-Privacy Directive, the CNIL is free to take direct action against companies that otherwise would be overseen by the Irish Data Protection Commission, because the GDPR gives prime enforcement power to the country where the company is legally established. Many tech companies have their EU bases in Dublin.

The French data protection censor has so far zoned in on two key violations: failing to allow users to refuse cookies as easily as it is to accept them, and automatically placing cookies on people's devices before they even have a chance to accept or refuse them. These are widespread violations across the web, but so far only the CNIL seems serious about tackling them.

France's data protection censor, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés or CNIL, has fined Google and Amazon a total of 135 million euro between them for violating the country's data protection laws. Google was fined a total of 100 million euro, while Amazon was fined 35 million euro.

The companies were fined for the lack of user consent for cookies placed of their French websites. Although both have since updated their websites to require a user's consent before placing cookies, CNIL criticized their cookie information banners for not providing enough information, or for making it clear enough that visitors can turn down these cookies. The regulator gave both a deadline of three months to fix the outstanding issues.

A spokesperson from Amazon said the company disagreed with CNIL's decision. Google said it stands by its efforts to provide information about tracking and control to users.

The so called cookie law, a moniker for the proposed new EU ePrivacy regulation due to come into play before the year is out, is expected to severely impact the use of cookies online and across digital marketing. As such, it could pose an even bigger test to businesses than GDPR . It's a regulation that will create a likely deficit in the customer information they collect even post-GDPR.

Current cookie banner notifications, where websites inform users of cookie collection, will make way for cookie request pop-ups that deny cookie collection until a user has opted in or out of different types of cookie collection. Such a pop-up is expected to cause a drop in web traffic as high as 40 per cent. The good news is that it will only appear should the user not have already set their cookie preferences at browser level.

The outcome for businesses whose marketing and advertising lies predominantly online is the inevitable reduction in their ability to track, re-target and optimise experiences for their visitors.

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For any business with a website and dependent on cookies, the new regulations put them at severe risk of losing this vital source of consumer data . As a result, businesses must find a practical, effective and legal alternative to alleviate the burden on the shoulders of all teams involved and to offset any drastic shortfall in this crucial data.

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Putting the power in the hands of consumers when it comes to setting browser-level cookie permissions will limit a business's ability to extensively track the actions users take on company websites and progress targeted cookie-based advertising. Millions of internet users will have the option to withdraw their dataset from the view of businesses, one of the biggest threats ePrivacy poses.

...Read the full article from smallbusiness.co.uk