They could accept cookies with just one click but there was a more laborious process for refusing.
Google owner Alphabet was fined 150 million (125 million) and Facebook owner Meta 60 million.
Meta and Alphabet have yet to comply, though they have until April to do so.
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Morecontentious cookiestrack a usersbrowsing behavior.
Cookies gather so much information that it is usually more than enough to identify the person behind the unit.
The GDPR requiressuch consentto be specific, informed, unambiguous, andgiven freely requiring affirmative action by the user.
Unfortunately, this is not giving us a great deal of protection.
Websites have used various methods to get around the requirements.
The popular option is the one that saw Facebook and Google sanctioned by the CNIL in France.
Others such asbbc.co.ukmake it more difficult to reject cookies but allow users to browse without consenting to them.
Other companies, including Google and Facebook, hide the refuse/decline button in a second window.
But its cookies banner covers half of the gear screen.
This reduces the quality of the users browsing experience and could potentially be regarded as a coercive practice.
They may also be betting that the relevant authorities are too underfunded or understaffed to enforce the rules.
The situation is unlikely to be radically different in other EU countries.
They should also allocate the required resources to enforce the rules.
Only then will the laws around these little-understood tools for harvesting our data be fit for purpose.
Reach declined and Alphabet, Twitter, and Ryanair did not respond.
