Brave, the startup behind the Brave browser and the Basic Attention Token, has filed regulatory complaints against Google and others over what it considers poor privacy protection for users in the online ads industry.
The complaints – filed with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner and the U.K. Information Commissioner on behalf of Brave’s chief policy officer Johnny Ryan, Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group, and Michael Veale of University College London – are aimed to trigger an article in the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requiring an EU-wide investigation.
Ryan said in a statement:
“There is a massive and systematic data breach at the heart of the behavioral advertising industry. Despite the two year lead-in period before the GDPR, adtech companies have failed to comply. The industry can fix this. Ads can be useful and relevant without broadcasting intimate personal data.”
As well as Google, the complaints target “all ad tech companies that broadcast internet users personal data widely in what are called RTB bid requests,” he told CoinDesk. “We anticipate that the regulators will order the industry to stop broadcasting personal data in this manner.”
The complainants argue that when users search on Google their personal data and information on their behavior online is broadcast to multiple companies interested in targeting them with ads – and without users’ consent. In doing so, they say, Google violates the GDPR’s requirement for personal data to be “processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss.”
The complaint indicates that the adtech industry can therefore process users’ information including such data as the content being viewed, location, type of device, unique tracking IDs, or a “cookie match,” and IP address. This data can help reveal many aspects of users, such as income, age and gender, habits, social media influence, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, political leaning and other sensitive information, it states.