France fines TikTok $5.4 million for online tracking shortcomings

France on Thursday fined TikTok 5 million euros ($5.4 million) for shortcomings linked to the short video platform's handling of online tracking known as "cookies", which the ByteDance-owned company said it had now addressed.

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.