France fines TikTok $5 million euros

France on Thursday fined
TikTok 5 million euros ($5.4 million) for shortcomings linked to
the ByteDance short video platform’s handling of online tracking
known as “cookies”.
French data protection watchdog CNIL said that its
investigation only concerned the website tiktok.com and not the
service’s much more heavily used smartphone applications.
The CNIL found that for tiktok.com’s users, it was not as
easy to refuse online trackers as to accept them. The authority
also found that internet users were not sufficiently informed
about TikTok’s use of the cookies.
Under European Union rules, websites must clearly ask for
the prior consent of internet users for any use of cookies –
small pieces of data stored while navigating on the Web.
They should also make it easy to refuse them, according to
the EU’s rules. ByteDance did not immediately reply to a request
for comment.