Google’s Undisclosed Use of Consumer Data Challenged Under GDPR

On March 16, Dr. Johnny Ryan of Brave Software, a California-based developer of a privacy-focused web browser, filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission regarding Google’s use of consumer data for undisclosed purposes across its business. The complaint argues that Google fails to adequately ring-fence the personal data it collects for its various services, instead allowing other parts of the company to use the data without making this clear to users. Such use would violate Article 5(1)b of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which establishes a “purpose limitation” principle. Specifically, GDPR allows user data to be collected for “specified, explicit and legitimate” purposes but forbids the use of such data “in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes.” The complaint follows Dr. Ryan’s attempts to find out how Google uses his personal data. Properly enforced, GDPR would allow users to limit how Google uses their personal data, in addition to increasing competition in the digital marketplace. Read more about the complaint here.

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