Google, SHEIN hit with massive fines in France over cookie rules

Google was issued a €325 million ($379 million) and SHEIN a €150 million ($175 million) fine by French regulators over a failure to comply with cookie rules.

The French data protection agency said Google and SHEIN failed to obtain user consent before slapping them with cookies linked to personalized advertisements. Google also displayed ads in its email service without consent.

As a result, the Commission Nationale de l'informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) issued heavy fines totalling over half a billion dollars to the two companies. The fine on Google consists of two separate penalties issued against Google LLC and Google Ireland: €200 million and €125 million, respectively.

According to the CNIL, the American search giant downplayed the option for users creating a Google account to choose cookies linked to the display of generic advertisements, and encouraged them to choose cookies linked to personalized ads instead.

It said users were not clearly informed about their cookie options or that accepting cookies was a condition of accessing Google’s services.

“Their consent obtained in this context was therefore not valid, which constituted a breach of the French Data Protection Act (Article 82),” the CNIL said in a statement.

The regulators also found fault with ads shown by Google in its Gmail service. The ads were displayed as emails in the platform’s “Promotions” and “Social” tabs, which the CNIL said required user consent.

The CNIL ordered Google to remedy the infractions or face a daily €100,000 penalty.

Meanwhile, the Chinese retailer SHEIN was fined through its Irish subsidiary for placing cookies on users “as soon as they arrived on the site, even before they interacted with the information banner to express a choice.”

It also said that SHEIN’s cookie consent forms were incomplete, there was no information on the third parties that were likely to place cookies, and users were not provided with adequate mechanisms to refuse or withdraw consent.

Cybernews has approached both Google and SHEIN for comment. In a statement to Reuters, SHEIN described the decision as “politically motivated” and said it would file an appeal. Google said it was reviewing the decision.

Tough week for Google

Earlier this week, Austria’s data protection authority ruled that Google must give users full access to their data if asked to do so following a five-year-long probe that the company can still appeal.

And over in the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned Google’s parent company, Alphabet, of potential law violations linked to allegations of Gmail’s “partisan” spam filters, claiming they routinely blocked messages from Republican senders but not Democrats.

On a brighter note, Google was spared a breakup in a landmark monopoly case this week. A judge ruled on Wednesday (September 3rd) that it won’t have to sell its Chrome browser. However, Google was ordered to share data with rivals to open up competition in online search.

SHEIN also finds itself a frequent target of regulators. In August, it was issued a €1 million fine by the Italian data protection authority for greenwashing the environmental impact of its products. It also received a €40 million fine in France in July for offering misleading discounts.