Consumer rights groups in Europe have filed a new series of privacy complaints against Google. Accusing the advertising giant of deceptive design around the account creation process. That they say steers users into agreeing to extensive and invasive processing of their data.
The tech giant profiles account holders for ad targeting purposes . Apparently relying on user consent as its legal basis. But the EU’s flagship data protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), bakes in a requirement for privacy by design and default. As well as setting clear conditions around how consent must gather for it to be lawful.
Hence the consumer groups’ beef — if deceptive design by Google is tricking users into accepting its tracking.
Fast track to track
The complaints highlight how more privacy-friendly options — described by Google as “manual personalization”. It require users to take five steps and ten clicks (“grappling with information that is unclear, incomplete, and misleading,” as they put it). Whereas it offers a one-click “Express personalisation” option that activates all the tracking. And making it terrible for privacy.
Repeat offender
This is not the first privacy-related complaint EU consumer rights have made about Google’s practices. They also raised a complaint focused on its collection of location data back in 2018. But it took until February 2020 for Google’s lead EU data supervisor, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), to start an inquiry. And, more than 2 years later, that data probe remains ongoing.
