Immediately after the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was implemented, privacy activists who had been waiting in the wings began filing complaints about the behavior of Google and Facebook. The phenomenon is expected to spread in the coming weeks, and not just for the largest internet companies.
The complaints come from a group called None Of Your Business (NOYB), led by Facebook’s longtime enemy Max Schrems, from Austria. Max Schrems is a lawyer and has been waging war against Facebook since he was a student, winning several lawsuits to date.
Schrems created NOYB with the aim of filing investigated complaints against large internet companies that do not follow the terms of the GDPR. The law allows non-profit organizations to do this on behalf of Europeans if it appears that their rights have been violated.
The first complaint from NOYB, filed shortly after the GDPR came into effect on Friday morning, concerns the widespread practice of insisting that users agree that a service wants to manage their data before they even use it. The GDPR states that this is not considered real consent.
So Schrems’ NGO has filed four complaints with four different European privacy regulators to ensure a coordinated investigation.
The first “forced consent” complaint concerns Android, and was filed in 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 prevent users from being forced to accept that their data will be used by ads just so they can use their phone or communicate with other users of a social network.
Schrems seems to have launched a concerted effort to redefine GDPR before it even comes into effect. And that’s not a bad thing at all…
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