Immediately after application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the privacy activists waiting in the corner began to file complaints about the behavior of Google and Facebook. The phenomenon is expected to expand in the coming weeks and not only for the largest online companies.
The complaints come from a group called None of Your Business (NOYB), headed by old Facebook foe Max Schrems, from Austria. THE Max Schrems is a lawyer and started the war against Facebook since he was a student, winning several lawsuits to date.
Schrems created NOYB to investigate complaints against major online companies that do not follow GDPR terms. The law allows non-profit organizations to do so on behalf of Europeans if it turns out that their rights have been violated.
The first complaint by NOYB, filed shortly after the GDPR came into force on Friday morning, concerns the widespread practice of insisting that users συμφωνούν στο ότι μια υπηρεσία θέλει να διαχειρίζεται τα δεδομένα τους πριν καν χρησιμοποιήσουν την υπηρεσία αυτή. Ο GDPR αναφέρει ότι αυτός ο τρόπος δεν θεωρείται real consent.
So Schrems' NGO has filed four complaints with four different European privacy regulators to make sure that coordinated research.
The first “forced consent” complaint concerns Android, and was filed on France. Facebook's complaint was filed in Austria, while the lawsuits against WhatsApp and Instagram were filed in Hamburg and Belgium respectively.
According to Schrems, the goal of these complaints is to not force users to accept that their data will be used by advertisements just to be able to use their phone or communicate with other users of a social network.
Schrems appears to have embarked on a concerted effort to redefine the GDPR before it is well implemented. And this is not a bad thing at all…
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