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Norway Runbox Blog Fast and Secure Email hosted in Norway Home News Help Support Forum Articles Contact us runbox.com Special Holiday Offer from Runbox December 19, 2023 Geir Leave a comment We are feeling extra merry this month and would like to make the holidays brighter with a special limited time offer: Throughout December you get a FREE YEAR with main account renewals on the Medium plan or larger! This means that your existing account plan will be immediatelyNO DPA is of course active in this process. [ source ] The Irish (IE) DPA took action 10 November and served Meta with an enforcement notice saying that the company has seven days to cease processing data for behavioral advertising. If not, the company will be fined. However, Meta has brought a High Court challenge , resulting in a permission for Meta to bring its judicial review action, and later also to grant Meta a temporary stay on the enforcement notice from coming into effect. When the matter will return to court is unclear . 2. Meta is taking a new case against the Norwegian Data Protection Authority Following up on the decision from 14 July this year, where Meta was notified that they may impose a fine of up to NOK 1 million (approximately USD 100 000) if Meta did not comply with the GDPR regarding consent from users of Facebook and Instagram when the company use personal data for behavioral advertising, the fine started rolling from 14 August. The NO DPA confirms that they have sent a claim of NOK 82 mill against Meta to the State Collection Agency, a unit within The Norwegian Tax Administration. Meta claims that the ban is invalid, and for the second time, Meta is taking the case to Oslo District Court. They also claim that the compulsory fine has to be abolished. However, Meta has later requested that the case be dismissed, and the NO DPA has agreed to this. But the case is not laid dead, because Meta kept open the possibility to raise the matter again, awaiting the outcome of the proceedings in the EDPB [ source ]. NO DPA (Datatilsynet) write in an email to a Norwegian newspaper (6 December 2023), that Meta has now reluctantly paid the fine. But it is not hard to guess that the last word is not said, 3. noyb files GDPR complaint against Meta over Pay or Okay” Recently (28 November), the Noyb – European Center for Digital Rights, a non-profit organization based in Vienna, Austria, filed a complaint against Meta with the Austrian data protection authority, on behalf of an anonymous complainant, who is unemployed and receives benefits, and lacks the financial means to pay Meta’s subscription fee €20.99 a month to access Facebook and Instagram. [ source ; source ] The noyb claims that paying up to €251.88 a year to retain their fundamental rights to data protection on Facebook and Instagram is unacceptable, and in addition, if such arrangement is not stopped, other tech companies will soon follow, according to noyb. [ source ]. With this, noyb opened up a wider concern and perspective on the matter, which may deserve another blog post. So, stay tuned. 4. Another complaint process: Meta’s pay-or-consent” model contravenes consumer legislation The European Consumer Organization ( BEUC , Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs), organizing Forbrukerrådet (The Norwegian Consumer Council) and similar organizations in Europe, has filed a complaint against Meta’s changes to its service in the EU, saying that the pay-or-consent” model is … an unfair choice for users, which runs afoul of EU consumer law on several counts and must be stopped.” The complaint is filed with the network of Consumer Protection Authorities (Consumer Protection Commission, CPC ) on the grounds of Meta engaging in unfair commercial practices in multiple ways.” Further, the BEUC press release contains a very to-the-point list of issues that are identified under consumer protection law, and put Meta in trouble: Aggressive practice; sense of urgency; misleading consumers to believe in less tracking an profiling, and to believe that not paying then the service is free” while they are paying through the provision of their data; the consumers do not have a real choice, because quitting the service means losing their contacts and interaction history. In Norway it is Forbrukertilsynet (The Norwegian Consumer Authority) that is entitled to impose a compulsory fine if the consumer legislation has been breached. In addition, BEUC is also assessing whether Meta is infringing the GDPR. Wrapping up the whole thing There is an intense battle going on: The power of the big technology companies over people and society, versus democratic principles and how they are embodied in European legislation. Because we at Runbox have the privacy flag hoisted, we will continue to follow what is happening in the field, and continue to keep our customers updated. The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter, and Runbox take no responsibility for its accuracy. It is advised that when using the information for any purpose other than personal that the sources provided are verified. Expert advice should be sought about your specific circumstances. Continue Reading → Posted in: News In the case of GDPR vs Meta’s illegal behavioral advertising, the Norwegian DPA plays an important role October 14, 2023 Åge BA Leave a comment This is blog post #19 in our series on the GDPR . Runbox takes a clear stand against big tech companies’ use of personal information for advertising purposes, and we are critical of their huge influence on society in general. At the same time, we are proud of the Norwegian government agencies’ effort to crack down on companies breaking privacy legislation, by applying the legislation provided by the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). This monitoring of privacy has its roots as far back as 1978 when Norway, as the second country in the world (shortly after Sweden), adopted a law on the processing of personal data, and established Datatilsynet (the Norwegian Data Protection Authority; NDPA). For instance, in October 2022 we wrote about Google Analytics (GA) vs privacy, f ollowing up with a blog post about action taken by NPDA towards a Norwegian company’s use of GA, which implies unlawful transfer of personal data to the United States via GA. In 2021 we published a coupl e of blog posts about reports from Forbrukerrådet (the Norwegian Consumer Council; NCC) about how the extensive AdTech and MarTech industry use personal data for targeted advertising. NDPA was then prompted (by NCC) to impose a fine of NOK 65 mill (approximately USD 6,5 mill) on the dating app Grindr for breaching the consent requirement in the GDPR. (Read our update on 30 September 2023 on the Grindr case h ere .) The Norwegian DPA case against Meta – and personal data as a commercial product NDPA logo [ source ] Meta Platforms Ltd is the umbrella organization that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more. Currently, the Norwegian DPA has a lawsuit going against Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd and Facebook Norway AS, because of illegal behavioral advertising where they use personal data they are not allowed to for such purposes [ sou rce , sou rce ] according to the GDPR. When they (as do Google and other tech companies) are using personal data for targeted advertising, it creates plenty of opportunities for advertisers to pay and get your personal information in return. [ source ]. In addition, they share the access to users’ data with other tech firms when doing business together, for instance Facebook argues that such firms are essentially an extension of itself, defined as service providers” or partners” [ so urce , s ource , s ource , sou rce ]. If that weren’t enough, real-time bidding (RTB) results in the average Norwegian internet user’s data being shared 340 times per day, according to a st udy from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) [ source ]. The fact that personal data has...