Photo of Cécile Auvieux (FR)

The CNIL has published draft recommendations on how to obtain consent when placing cookies. This is following the publication of its revised “Guidelines on the implementation of cookies or similar tracking technologies” which was published in July 2019 (see our article here).

The objective of the recommendations is to provide stakeholders with practical guidance and illustrative examples. These recommendations are neither exhaustive nor binding and data controllers are free to consider other practical measures as long as they comply with the revised rules as provided by the CNIL in July 2019. The CNIL also provides a number of “good practices” that will enable businesses to go even further in their compliance process.

Five years after the commencement of legal proceedings against Google by leading French consumer association UFC Que Choisir, the Paris “Tribunal de Grande Instance” (TGI), in a decision dated 12 February 2019, issued its ruling on the legality of the Google+ Terms of Use and Privacy Rules, both with respect to consumer law and personal data protection regulations.

On January 21,2019 the French data protection authority (the CNIL) imposed a major fine on the U.S. Google entity, Google LLC.  It follows two complaints filed as soon as the GDPR came into force by two consumer rights associations, None of Your Business and La Quadrature du Net.

We focus here on four key aspects of the decision: (a) why the Irish Data Protection Commission (Irish DPC) did not take the case; (b) the consent mechanism failings; (c) the privacy policy failings; and (d) the amount of the fine.