2023-08-08 19:04:54
The organism regulator of Norway has imposed this Tuesday a MORE of nearly $100,000 a day to the technology company Meta for having used personal data of users of Facebook e Instagram to send them advertising personalized.
The Norwegian Data Protection Authority has decided that the social media giant must pay a penalty of one million Norwegian crowns (more than 88,900 euros) every day from August 14 until it stops extracting data from the users of its platforms for advertising purposes.
On July 17, the Norwegian regulator ordered the company led by Mark Zuckerberg to stop tracking users’ online activity, as well as their geolocationfor the personalization of adverts considering that these are “very opaque and intrusive tracking and profiling operations.” The ban is expected to last for three months.
The blockade of the Scandinavian country responds to the fact that Meta’s practices would suppose a violation of the regulations of Data Protection. “Meta’s behavioral advertising involves a surveillance intrusive of its users, which has a negative impact on their right to data protection and freedom of information,” Tobias Judin, the head of the international section of the regulatory body, explained on Tuesday.
Illegal data collection
The temporary restriction directly harms Meta’s business, which is based on the behavioral advertising. Companies of all kinds spend billions a year on Facebook and Instagram because both platforms allow them to segment the audience they target their ads to, something that is due to their intense tracking of user activity.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled on July 4 that the collection of data from Meta users is illegal, because it is done without their explicit consent. Norway is not part of the European Community Club, but can make national decisions based on the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation in “cases of urgencyOslo believes that now is the time and that is why it has been the first country on the continent to issue these drastic sanctions.
Meta had until August 4 to correct this practice, but has decided to “not respect” that prohibition. A spokesperson for the tech company told AFP that it is appealing Norway’s decision, as they believed they had struck a deal with the regulator when it proposed last week to finally comply with EU regulations and give European users the option of reject the tracking of their activity for advertising purposes, according to ‘The Wall Street Journal’. The proposal still needs to be reviewed and approved by Brussels.
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