Pinterest Under Fire: Secret Tracking Ads Spark EU Privacy Complaint.
A new twist has come about with visual inspiration platform Pinterest, which is now facing allegations of violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union. A complaint by the European rights group noyb-no-yob aka None of Your Business basically states that Pinterest has secretly been tracking users and profiling them in order to analyze the behavior of its users, all without their consent.
While Pinterest has dodged most of the privacy scandals that hit social media platforms like Facebook, this latest complaint raises huge and important questions about the company’s tracking practices and personalized advertising, which seem to have highly spooked users about their own privacy.
The Complaints: A Breach of the GDPR?
The core of the case is that Pinterest has not sought to get the consent of its users before tracking them for ad targeting, which violates the GDPR. Companies are required to have a legal basis to process personal data under the GDPR, and the law insists on consent if the processing is to be for activities such as targeted advertising. It can impose fines of up to 4% of a company’s global annual revenue; such a danger does not make it easy to ignore, and with companies like Pinterest, which categorize as tech giants, it has managed to raise huge concerns within the corporate world.
One of the most stunning aspects of the case is that Pinterest had relied on “legitimate interest” as a legal ground for the tracking of users instead of clear, affirmative consent. However, the top court of the EU had already ruled in two other cases that personalized ads could not be justified under that legal basis – which is exactly one of noyb’s main claims against this Austrian Alexa Perathoner.
A Troubling History: The Sad Case of Molly Russell
While Pinterest has not often been in the crosshairs of history’s privacy complaint list, this is not the first time the practices of this platform have come under criticism. Pro-suicide content pushed into her social feeds by several platforms, including Pinterest, helped to seal the tragic case of UK schoolgirl Molly Russell, who died from suicide in 2017. It was only recently that a UK coroner report in 2022 cited “the negative effects of online content” as a factor in her death, thus opening the question of risk regarding the tracking and profiling of users by social media for targeted content.
Hidden Tracking without Permission
The noyb complaint was founded upon the experience of an anonymous Pinterest user who discovered that the platform was tracking her activity and personalizing ads without asking for her permission. Upon reviewing her privacy settings, she found that ad personalization was turned on by default and that Pinterest was using information from websites she has visited along with her on-platform activity to show targeted ads.
By default, European Pinterest users are opted into tracking unless they act to opt out- a scenario noyb describes as illegal under the General Data Protection Regulation. According to the privacy rights group, “The platform secretly tracks European users without asking for their consent, enabling Pinterest to illegally profit from their personal data.”
The Consequences: Major Fines for Pinterest?
noyb has already filed a complaint with the data protection authority of France, CNIL, known for seriousness when handling complaints over matters of privacy. The CNIL had fined tech giants Google and Amazon for breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation, so it could do the same to Pinterest.
noyb also sued Pinterest for refusal to honor a request for access to data that it must provide under the GDPR. The user whose complaint was lodged had requested categories of data shared with third parties but only received partial information even after repeated requests, raising further transparency and compliance questions.
Read more on Strict Privacy Regulations of the GDPR and How User Data is Protected across Europe.
What This Means for Users of Pinterest:
This alleged action by Pinterest goes beyond legal implications; it is an ethical one regarding user privacy. About 130 million users reside on the platform in Europe, where they may be unwittingly tracked and profiled, their personal data used to feed Pinterest’s ad business, without their permission being sought or obtained. In case the CNIL finds the fact that Pinterest did violate the GDPR, the company may face a very heavy penalty, and probably its data processed for advertisements on behalf of the users would probably be deleted.
This serves as a grim reminder to all users of ad-funded platforms to review their privacy settings and become aware of how they operate in terms of data use. More on how to keep your information private on Pinterest: Privacy and Data Settings for Pinstagrammers.
A Battling Widening Problem of Privacy
But Pinterest is not alone under closer scrutiny for its privacy practices. The parent of Facebook, Meta Platforms, has already been forced to change its model of tracking ads with a consent-based system in Europe, and other tech titans will follow its lead, or so it seems, in response to stricter oversight on data processing – Google and Amazon, to name but a few.
A ruling in the case of Pinterest may come to become landmark in nature and not just for Pinterest, but for all the ad-funded platforms that operate in Europe. As enforcement of GDPR continues to gain momentum and the world sees new regulations set into play in different jurisdictions, the maze of legal obligations through which the tech companies need to navigate to comply will continue to grow.
Future Lawsuits against Companies Like Pinterest
The future of lawsuits against companies like Pinterest, however, may be quite different, given the fact that most governments are now taking steps to enforce stricter privacy laws. China has already mandated watermarking regulations in AI-generated content to be enforced compulsorily, and California is also considering a similar step to heighten the protection of their citizens’ privacy. With synthetic content burgeoning and AI-driven advertisements gradually playing the center stages, if such platforms fail to adhere to the new regulations, they’d find themselves facing lawsuits much more frequently.
Conclusion
A battle over privacy now awaits Pinterest, which may raise ad-funded platforms, including video sharing and streaming services, to a total overhaul of how they operate in Europe and the rest of the world. Users of these platforms today have to know their privacy settings and review how the platforms track and use all your personal data.
Stay updated:Â Tech News
