Update: In October 2019, the European Court of Justice held that in order to store cookies on user devices, the users must actively consent and that pre-checked checkbox that users must actively deselect is not a valid form of consent. The European Court of Justice also stated that all types of cookies require active consent, […]
On February 7, 2019, the Bundeskartellamt, the German antitrust authority, prohibited Facebook from combining data concerning German Facebook users gathered also from third party websites when the user didn’t give voluntary consent to this practice. The decision concerns all private users of Facebook based in Germany. According to the Bundeskartellamt’s decision, until now, individuals […]
On December 19, 2018, Advocate General Bobek, published his opinion in case C-40/17, deeming that anyone who enters the Facebook “Like” button on his website can be considered a joint controller. In this case, a German fashion online retailer embedded a Facebook’s ‘Like’ button in its website. As a result, when users landed on the […]
On January 10, 2018, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued his opinion in the case of Google v. CNIL (Case C-507/17). In the opinion, the Advocate General stresses that the right to be forgotten must be balanced against other fundamental rights, such as the legitimate public […]
In November 2018, a German local court, the Amtsgericht Diez, decided on a claim for immaterial damages under Art. 82.1, GDPR. According to this source, on May 25, 2018, Plaintiff received an e-mail in which Plaintiff’s consent to receive a newsletter was requested. An email of this sort is considered spam under German law and […]
On October 10, 2018, UK High Court blocked the class-action against Google over unlawful iPhone tracking allegations. The claimant, Richard Lloyd, alleged that, during 2011 and 2012, Google secretly tracked the internet activity of Apple iPhone users and then sold the data. The method by which Google was able to do this is generally referred […]
On September 3, 2018, the Bundesgerichtshof, the German Federal Court of Justice deferred a preliminary ruling to the Court of justice of the European Union (CJEU) to decide whether, under EU data protection laws, a pre-checked checkbox – which the user must unselect to refuse his consent – is a valid consent to store information, […]
On July 12, 2018, the German federal court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) overturned the judgment of the Berlin’s highest state court (Kammergerichts), which had denied the parents’ access to their daughter’s Facebook account. The case involved a mother trying to access the deceased 15-year-old daughter’s Facebook account in order to understand the cause of death. With its […]
On June 5, 2018, the European Court of Justice (CJEU), issued its preliminary ruling in C‑210/16, opining on the definition of data controller, applicable national law, and jurisdiction under EU data protection law according to Directive 95/46/EC. According to the CJEU’s judgement, EU companies that have been advertising through Facebook can be considered data […]
On February 1, 2018, the Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali, the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA), prohibited an Italian company to store employees’ corporate emails for an indefinite period. This would violate the principles of lawfulness, necessity, and proportionality established by the Privacy Code. The DPA explained that the company – instead of implementing […]