Developer browser open source Brave and token BAT filed a complaint against Google and a number of Irish and British advertising agencies. According to employees of the Brave, IT-giant violates the General regulation on personal data protection (GDPR), acting on the territory of the EU.
Says Brave, Google and other advertisers continue to collect demographic and consumer behavioral data every time a user visits any web page. Then this information is sold to third parties to personalize advertisements; according to the Brave, we are talking about tens and even hundreds of such transactions. This is a direct violation of requirements of Article 62 GDPR on the protection of personal data processing without the user’s consent.
In comments to Reuters, chief officer policy Brave johnny Ryan (Johnny Ryan) said:
“The whole industry behavioural advertising is based on systematic full-scale data breach. Despite the fact that the entry into force of the GDPR has provided two years of preparatory period, a company working in the field of online marketing and not withdrawn workflows on a legal level.”
Ryan hopes that the complaint will be sufficient grounds to the EU authorities have begun a full investigation. He added that the ads can be quite useful and relevant to users “without sharing personal information.” If the investigation confirms the charges Brave, Google and other companies named in the complaint, will be fined in the amount from €23,25 million to 4% of the total turnover.
In turn, a Google representative contacted the online publication ZDNet has rejected charges in violation of regulations and low level of professional ethics of the company:
“Our products are always created taking into account privacy and security [user data] at the earliest stages and we intend to adhere strictly to the General rules on personal data protection in the EU. We provide users with significant transparency and control over their data within each of our service on the EU market, including personalized ads”.
The first version of Brave entered the market in January 2016. Currently, the monthly number of active browser users exceeded three million; over the past 5 months the program has been downloaded over 10 million users of Android smartphones.
