In a significant decision, the Austrian Data Protection Authority (DPA) has decided using Facebook’s tracking pixel directly violates the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) following the Schrems II ruling on transatlantic data flows by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The DPAs decision stems from the 101 complaints filed against European companies by Austrian privacy group NOYB in August 2020 for continuing to send user data to Facebook and Google despite the CJEU having struck down the Privacy Shield agreement in July 2020.
In a statement, Max Schrems, Honorary Chair of NOYB, said, “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.”
While the DPA did not confirm whether a penalty had been issued, the decision is relevant to all EU websites that use Facebook's tracking technology to deliver targeted advertisements.
(Translate to English: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Microsoft Edge)
What is this page?
You are reading a summary article on the Privacy Newsfeed, a free resource for DPOs and other professionals with privacy or data protection responsibilities helping them stay informed of industry news all in one place. The information here is a brief snippet relating to a single piece of original content or several articles about a common topic or thread. The main contributor is listed in the top left-hand corner, just beneath the article title.
The Privacy Newsfeed monitors over 300 global publications, of which more than 4,350 summary articles have been posted to the online archive dating back to the beginning of 2020. A weekly roundup is available by email every Friday.
