Use of Meta Tracking Tools Found to Breach EU Rules on Data Transfers
upstart writes:
Use of Meta tracking tools found to breach EU rules on data transfers:
Austria's data protection authority has found that use of Meta's tracking technologies violated EU data protection law as personal data was transferred to the US where the information was at risk from government surveillance.
The finding flows from a swathe of complaints filed by European privacy rights group noyb, back in August 2020, which also targeted websites' use of Google Analytics over the same data export issue. A number of EU DPAs have since found use of Google Analytics to be unlawful - and some (such as France's CNIL) have issued warnings against use of the analytics tool without additional safeguards. But this is the first finding that Facebook tracking tech breached the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
All the decisions follow a July 2020 ruling by the European Union's top court that struck down the high level EU-US Privacy Shield data transfer agreement after judges once again identified a fatal clash between US surveillance laws and EU privacy rights. (A similar finding, back in 2015, invalidated Privacy Shield's predecessor: Safe Harbor.)
noyb ['none of your business' * see below. --Ed] trumpets the latest data transfer breach finding by an EU DPA as "groundbreaking" - arguing that the Austrian authority's decision should send a signal to other sites that it's not advisable to use Meta trackers (the complaint concerns Facebook Login and the Meta pixel).
[...] "Facebook has pretended that its commercial customers can continue to use its technology, despite two Court of Justice judgments saying the opposite. Now the first regulator told a customer that the use of Facebook tracking technology is illegal," said Max Schrems, chair of noyb.eu, in a statement.
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