Unearthed Emails Show Google, Ad Giants Know They Break Privacy Laws (theregister.co.uk)

AmiMoJo shares a report from The Register: Privacy warriors have filed fresh evidence in their ongoing battle against real-time web ad exchange systems, which campaigners claim trample over Europe's data protection laws. The new filings -- submitted today to regulators in the UK, Ireland, and Poland -- allege that Google and industry body the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) are well aware that their advertising networks flout the EU's privacy-safeguarding GDPR, and yet are doing nothing about it. The IAB, Google -- which is an IAB member -- and others in the ad-slinging world insist they aren't doing anything wrong. The fresh submissions come soon after the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) revealed plans to probe programmatic ads. These are adverts that are selected and served on-the-fly as you visit a webpage, using whatever personal information has been scraped together about you to pick an ad most relevant to your interests. [...] The ICO's investigation will focus on how well informed people are about how their personal information is used for this kind of online advertising, which laws ad-technology firms rely on for processing said private data, and whether users' data is secure as it is shared on these platforms.

Comments

Re:The only solution is jail

[AmiMoJo]

I think in this case it's not the right to privacy, it's lack of consent. When they run that auction they don't appear to have affirmative, opt-in consent from the user to use their data for that purpose.

Re: The only solution is jail

[Anonymous Coward]

If I pay for my protection racket (taxes), the least we can expect is to be actually protected from the other gangsters in town.