The 25th of May 2018, the new GDPR rules came into effect in the European Union. Few hours after, a few companies were already accused of breaching the new regulation.
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A group led by a privacy activist has filed formal complaints against Facebook, Google, WhatsApp and Instagram, the same day GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) was applied.
These companies are being accused of forcing users to accept targeted advertisement to be able to use their services. The complaints argue that GDPR only allows data collection needed to run the service, while the attacked companies force users to accept a more general data collection system, without giving them the opportunity to op-out of it. It’s either accept it, or not use the service.
In total, 3 complaints were filed against Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, for a total of 3.9 billion euros, and a fourth one was filled against Google, for a total of 3.7 billion euros.
These complaints are what we could call a first test to the new law. Whether they are successful or not will depend on how the law is interpreted, and will set a precedent for future complaints and cases.
More on this subject:
- Facebook and Cambridge Analytica’s Scandal: Misuse of personal information of 50 million Facebook users (29/03/2018)
- EU’s new privacy regulation (31/03/2018)
- Mark Zuckerberg has accepted the invitation from the European Parliament (19/05/2018)
- Companies struggling to implement GDPR (26/05/2018)
- After meeting with the European Parliament, Facebook applies GDPR to all its users (28/05/2018)
