Court Says Meta’s Subsidiary Processed Users’ Data For Ad Targeting Unlawfully

Tech giant Meta is experiencing another major blow after its respective subsidiary functioning in Europe has been accused of unlawful behavior.

The news comes after a recent Dutch court ruling claimed the Irish court subsidiary didn’t have any lawful means to process data that belonged to users without taking prior consent.

The purpose was related to ad targeting of data belonging to users in the region. This was spotted by a privacy advocacy group owned by the Dutch called DPS and other non-profit firms.

A lawsuit was filed against Meta in this regard in 2019. At that time, the case was addressed to Facebook as Meta ceased to exist. But now, Meta is being held accountable for the ordeal as it is argued that this social networking site breached terms seen in the EU data protection rules.

It failed to get the right kind of permission from different users in terms of processing the data for the sake of ad targeting and forcing local users to join actions related to redressing the firm’s privacy violation while attaining compensation in return.

Facebook has worked hard to block this legal case through procedural means. However, so far, it has failed to do so. Moreover, the district court in Amsterdam ruled against the company and stated that the hearing for the case would go ahead as planned.

Today’s ruling today says the Irish subsidiary of Facebook broke privacy laws with their respective actions related to advertising without putting out a proper legal basis statement including consent.

But it did not stop there as the case goes on to rule how Meta failed to inform users and continued to pass on information so that third parties would benefit from this.

The court has called this behavior unlawful and unfair on the part of consumers as being ill-informed regarding this is so misleading. Today, the average consumer isn’t able to make good or thought-provoking decisions regarding their participation in the app’s service because it isn’t allowed to.

This is one of the most unfair commercial practices out there today, it adds. So if we had to summarize in the simplest of words, the core finding states that it fails to have any lawful grounds for behavior targeting and that is a huge offense in the region.


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