SHEIN fined €150M for installing tracking cookies without users’ consent

The Chinese online retail store SHEIN has been fined €150 million by the French data protection authority CNIL for illegally installing tracking cookies.

According to the privacy regulator, SHEIN committed several violations.

For starters, the company failed to obtain user consent before submitting tracking cookies. Instead, several trackers were placed on the devices of users as soon as they arrived on SHEIN’s website. They weren’t offered a banner to express a choice.

Secondly, SHEIN used two incomplete banners on its website. The first banner had three buttons titled ‘Cookie settings’, ‘Refuse everything’, and ‘Accept,’ but it did not contain any information on the advertising purpose of the tracking cookies. A second pop-up prompt only contained one button, allowing trackers to be installed. This prompt also didn’t include information on their purpose.

Furthermore, SHEIN provided insufficient information on the identity of third parties likely to deposit trackers. This information had to be accessible by clicking the button ‘Cookie settings’, but it wasn’t.

Lastly, the mechanisms for refusing or withdrawing consent didn’t function. When a user visited the retailer’s homepage and clicked on the ‘Refuse everything’ button in the banner, or when he decided to withdraw his consent to the installation of tracking cookies, new trackers were nevertheless installed, and others, already present, continued to function.

For these violations, the French data protection authority imposed a fine of €150 million. The supervisor took into account that SHEIN has an average of 12 million monthly active customers living in France.

Meanwhile, SHEIN has made adjustments so solve all violations.

The Chinese online retailer said it “firmly contests” the CNIL’s decision and will file an appeal. “We consider the fine to be wholly disproportionate, given the nature of the alleged issues, our current full compliance, and the proactive corrective actions we have taken,” a company spokesperson told Reuters.

He added that the size of the fine “appears politically motivated rather than the result of fair and balanced enforcement.”

This is the third time a European regulator has imposed a fine on SHEIN. In July, France’s antitrust agency issued a €40 million fine to the Chinese fashion retailer for deceptive business practices, including misleading discounts.

Last month, the Italian data protection authority imposed a fine of €1 million for misleading users about its products’ environmental impacts.