France fines TikTok $5.4 mln for online tracking shortcomings

FILE PHOTO: TikTok app logo is seen in this illustration taken, August 22, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File PhotoPARIS: 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.

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