TikTok  fined R91 million

TikTok UK and TikTok Ireland have been fined €5 million (R91 million) for making it difficult for users to decline cookies and failing to adequately advise them of their purpose.

TikTok was fined by France’s data protection authority, the Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL), for violating Article 82 of France’s data protection rules.

While TikTok UK and TikTok Ireland provided a straightforward prompt and button for users to accept all cookies immediately, rejecting them was not as simple and needed several clicks.

“The restricted committee considered that making the refusal mechanism more complex actually discouraged users from refusing cookies and encouraged them to prefer the ease of the ‘accept all’ button,” the CNIL said.

“It concluded that this process infringed the freedom of consent of Internet users and constituted a violation of Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act.”

According to Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act, services must get user authorization for cookie storage and allow the user to grant or decline such permission.

Consent dialogues should thus be balanced and allow users to select any option, which was not the case on TikTok’s UK and Ireland sites.

Despite the CNIL constantly warned TikTok of the problem beginning in June 2021, the firm did not provide a “Reject All” option until February 2022.