Monday, 11 September 2017
On 16:46 by admin No comments
Facebook has incurred yet another fine for privacy violations in Europe, this time in Spain.
On
Monday, the Spanish data protection authority (AEPD) said Facebook had
been breaking privacy rules on multiple counts over the way it uses
people's personal data for advertising purposes. The agency fined the
social network €1.2 million ($1.44 million).
Specifically, the AEPD called out the way Facebook (fb, +1.50%)
collects data on people's ideologies and religious beliefs, sex and
personal tastes—from its own services and those of third parties—without
clearly telling its users what it will do with this information.
The
watchdog said Facebook did not get properly informed consent from users
before exploiting this information, and also noted that the company
violated laws by not deleting data that was no longer useful for the
reasons it was collected.
The
consent issue qualified as a "very serious" infringement, meriting a
€600,000 fine, while the other two qualified as "serious," each
garnering a €300,000 fine.
In
a statement, Facebook claimed the Spanish data protection authority
(DPA) was wrong to say it showed people advertising based on sensitive
personal data. It said ad-targeting was instead based on the interest
people express by "liking" certain content on the social network.
Under
EU law, "personal data" means "any information relating to an
identified or identifiable natural person," so people's "likes" would
qualify as personal data.
"We
take note of the DPA’s decision with which we respectfully disagree.
Whilst we value the opportunities we've had to engage with the DPA to
reinforce how seriously we take the privacy of people who use Facebook,
we intend to appeal this decision," a spokesperson said. "As we made
clear to the DPA, users choose which information they want to add to
their profile and share with others, such as their religion. However, we
do not use this information to target adverts to people."
The Spanish regulator's crackdown follows coordination with agencies in other countries,
namely France (which fined Facebook €150,000 earlier this year),
Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. In recent years, European
regulators have taken to ganging up on the likes of Facebook and Google (googl, +0.16%), because individually they cannot levy fines that would make a serious dent in these giants' wallets.
All that will change in May next year, when the EU's new General Data Protection Regulation
comes into effect. This privacy law will allow for fines of up to €20
million or 4% of a company's annual global revenues, whichever is
higher.
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