NOYB set to use Pinterest as a scapegoat
The European privacy rights non-profit, NOYB, has accused Pinterest of violating the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by tracking and profiling users without their consent.
The GDPR stipulates up to 4% of global annual turnover for confirmed violations. Therefore, such complaints can cause a major setback for the party involved.
So far, Pinterest has avoided privacy issues, especially in comparison to its counterparts. Pinterest tracking was aggravated in 2017 when Molly Russell, a UK school girl committed suicide. It was confirmed that the social media she used, including Pinterest, suggested pro-suicide content to her.
Pinterest has also been accused of failing to grant a GDPR data access request. While Pinterest claims a legal basis for processing people’s data for targeted ads according to Legitimate Interest (LI), NOYB argues that this is non-compliant with GDPR.
Referencing a July 2023 ruling by the European Union’s top court which refused to grant Meta the ability to ram its surveillance ads through LI, NOYB reiterated that Pinterest must secure Europeans’ consent to operate its “personalized ads” business.
Currently, Pinterest automatically tracks all of its 130 million regional users. Kleanthi Sardeli, a data protection lawyer at NOYB said, “Pinterest is secretly tracking European users without asking for their consent. This allows the social media platform to unlawfully profit from people’s personal data without them ever finding out.”
“It appears that Pinterest is actively ignoring a European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling to maximise its profits. The CJEU made it clear that personalised advertising cannot be based on legitimate interest.”
NOYB’s complaint against Pinterest was filed on behalf of an anonymous user who claimed she was unaware that the app was tracking her without her permission. According to her, she didn’t know what was going on until she checked her privacy and data settings. Then she saw that ad personalization was automatically turned on.
She also stated that the app uses information from the other websites she visits for ad display. The complainant demands that Pinterest delete any data it has processed and communicate accordingly, to its users. NOYB, however, is out to make Pinterest a scapegoat.
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