he European Privacy Rights non-profit noyb, is accusing the social media platform Pinterest of violating the GDPR rules. The EU rights state that
Pinterest has not obtained consent from users to have ad tracking and profiling for different ads.
In similar cases, the General Data Protection Regulations also known as GDPR allows some penalties equivalent to up to 4% of the global annual revenue if these violations of the rules are indeed true. More than that, such complaints in some cases can lead to significant fines for the tech giants.
The complaint against Pinterest was filed for France’s authority of data protection and stated that the platform didn’t comply with a GDPR data access request. Also, the GDPR complaint alleges that Pinterest has failed to disclose what categories were shared with third parties.
Under the General Data Protection rules, all companies must have a legitimate legal basis for processing personal user’s data. It also ensures that every EU user will have a range of access rights which includes the right to request a copy of their personal data.
Currently, Pinterest has about 130 million users in Europe, and it seems that it uses an ad tracking software that tracks all of them by default to personalize user’s ads.
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So if you are a European Pinterest user and you don’t want to be included in the ad tracking software and profiled for ads, you must oppose the platform’s data processing. However, noyb argues that the social media platform should proactively ask users for consent before using their information for advertising or any other way, rather than making them oppose.
The data protection lawyer at noyb, Kleanthi Sardeli states “Pinterest is secretly tracking European users without asking for their consent. This allows the social media platform to unlawfully profit from people’s personal data without them ever finding out.”
“It appears that Pinterest is actively ignoring a European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling in order to maximise its profits. The CJEU made it clear that personalised advertising cannot be based on legitimate interest,”, he also added in his statement.
It should be noted that the social media platform has been contacted to respond to the GDPR complaint, but they refused to give any in-depth information about this complaint.
But, noyb confirmed that they filed the GDPR complaint also against Pinterest U.S. pointing out that the company’s privacy policy identifies both Pinterest Europe and the U.S. as data controllers responsible for ad tracking and data processing.
By
Alice Brasoveanu
•
October 24, 2024 10:05 AM
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