The law for trust in the digital economy (LCEN) of June 21, 2004, requires every professional website to display legal notices clearly identifying its responsible party. This obligation applies to both micro-entrepreneurs and companies, as well as showcase sites and online shops. Since 2025, the CNIL has intensified its online checks on these information pages, and formal violations are more frequently resulting in public warnings.
CNIL Checks and Legal Notices: What Has Changed Since 2025
The CNIL’s 2024 activity report, published on April 11, 2025, indicates a rise in online checks concerning mandatory information pages: legal notices, privacy policy, cookie management. “Small” showcase sites are no longer spared.
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In practical terms, an absent or inconsistent legal notice page is enough to trigger a warning. The CNIL is no longer limited to large platforms: it checks the formal compliance of low-traffic sites. To see how a legal notice page can be structured in practice, you can learn more on the Belle Déco website, which illustrates a common format for a professional site.
This evolution changes the game for freelancers and small businesses. Publishing a site without a dedicated page or with outdated information exposes one to sanctions that, even without an immediate fine, lead to an unflattering public disclosure for the company’s image.
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Mandatory Legal Notices: Differences Between Individuals and Legal Entities
The content of legal notices varies according to the legal status of the website’s responsible party. Confusing the two cases is a common mistake, especially among entrepreneurs who change their status without updating their page.
Individual Entrepreneur or Micro-Entrepreneur
A website operated by an individual must display the name and surname of the responsible party, accompanied by the mention “individual entrepreneur” or the initials “EI”. This must include the home address, an email address, a phone number, the registration number with the RCS, the VAT identification number, as well as the identity of the site’s host (name, address, phone).
Company (Legal Entity)
For a company, the required notices include the company name, legal form, and amount of share capital, in addition to the registered office address and contact details. The registration number and the intra-community VAT number remain required, as do the details regarding the host.
The identity of the host is mandatory in all cases, whether the site is hosted in France or abroad. Forgetting this mention is one of the most common violations noted during checks.
Specific Obligations for Regulated Activities and E-Commerce
Some professions and types of sites must go beyond the common baseline. Available data shows that these additional obligations are often overlooked, even by experienced professionals.
Regulated Professions: Health, Law, Finance
The National Council of the Order of Physicians updated its “Doctor’s Website” sheet in July 2024. Health, law, or finance professionals must include in their legal notices:
- The professional title and the state in which it was granted
- The name of the Order or regulatory authority they are under
- The limitations applicable to their advertising rights, if any
- A reference to the professional rules governing their activity
A failure to comply with these obligations can lead to disciplinary proceedings before the relevant Order, in addition to the sanctions provided by the LCEN.
Online Sales Sites
An e-commerce site must add to its legal notices the general terms and conditions of sale (GTC), payment methods, delivery times and conditions, the right of withdrawal, as well as the contact details of the consumer mediator. The absence of GTC on a commercial site constitutes a distinct violation from the absence of legal notices, but both are checked simultaneously during inspections.
Personal Data and Cookies in Legal Notices
The GDPR requires informing visitors about the collection and processing of their personal data. This information can be included in the legal notices or in a separate privacy policy page, but it must remain easily accessible from every page of the site.
The elements to specify cover several points:
- The purposes of data collection (contact form, newsletter, audience analysis)
- The legal basis for processing (consent, legitimate interest, legal obligation)
- The recipients of the data and any transfers outside the European Union
- The retention period for the collected data
- The rights of users (access, rectification, deletion, portability)
For cookies, a compliant consent banner must allow accepting or refusing each category of tracker. The simple “I accept” button without an alternative to refuse has not satisfied the CNIL’s requirements for several years, and this non-compliance is among the recurring reasons for warnings.
Digital Accessibility and Legal Notices: An Increasingly Close Link
The general accessibility improvement reference framework (RGAA) requires public sites to display an accessibility statement. With the European directive on the accessibility of products and services, this obligation is gradually extending to private sector sites.
The accessibility statement specifies the level of compliance of the site (compliant, partially compliant, non-compliant), any exemptions, and a means to report an accessibility defect. It differs from traditional legal notices but tends to appear in the same place, in the footer of the site, alongside the privacy policy.
Field feedback varies on the exact timeline for application to private sites, but the regulatory trend is clear: the legal notices page is becoming a hub of multiple obligations, not just a formal exercise related to the LCEN.
Updating legal notices once a year, checking the consistency between the actual legal status of the company and the published information, and ensuring that the mentioned host is still correct: these simple actions prevent the majority of warnings noted by the CNIL in its latest report.