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GDPR Still More Words Than Action

In January 2019, the French data protection agency CNIL, fined Google with a record €50 million fine for breaching GDPR in their ad targeting and transparency requirements on its Android mobile operating system. Apart from that, we have seen no enforcement of the groundbreaking European privacy rules, which went into force over one and a half years ago, according to Politco. While we are waiting for European regulators to show their muscles, Politico has looked at some of the more prominent complaints. Do send more, if you know of any others.

  • Max Schrems and his team at Noyb.eu have filed 4 lawsuits against Facebook, Google, Instagram and WhatsApp, respectively, over the idea that they were “forcing” users to agree to have their personal data harvested in order to be able to use services. These suits were all forwarded to the Irish Data Protection Commission.
  • Further, Noyb.eu has filed cases against Amazon and Apple.
  • La Quadrature du Net, a French digital rights group,  has filed 7 lawsuits against five Big Tech companies. One of the cases, concerning Google’s Android mobile operating system, resulted in the French CNIL regulator hitting the search giant with a €50 million fine in January of 2019, but the others remain in limbo
  • The European consumer protection organizations, BEUC, has filed a complaint against Google over alleged privacy failures in the way it tracks users’ location
  • Johnny Ryan working with the privacy-focused web browser Brave, has complained to Ireland’s privacy regulator in over a “GDPR workaround” that was allowing Google to collect data on users without valid consent.

Get the full story and read the excuses here