YouTube and Meta Face Criminal Charges in Ireland Over Ad Blocker Data Collection
The complaint covers YouTube’s ad blocker tracking and Meta’s behavioral ad targeting.
- YouTube and Meta are facing criminal charges over unlawfully conducting surveillance on EU citizens.
- The complaint relates to tracking the use of ad blockers and setting restrictions on free accounts through scripts on the platform.
Meta and YouTube are facing criminal charges in Ireland for unlawfully using tracking scripts for tracking the use of ad blockers and setting up behavioral ad targeting campaigns. The case was filed by privacy consultant Alexander Hanff, challenging Meta’s data collection practices that often do not ask for user consent. The cases come under Ireland’s computer abuse laws.
The complaint against YouTube was filed at the Irish Data Protection Commission, which will investigate the platform’s system to examine browsers for ad-blocking software, disallowing such browsers from running the application. Google, which owns YouTube, has yet to update regulators on these claims.
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According to the complaint by Hanff, platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube use extensive tools and scripts that violate ‘Do Not Track’ settings, which signals that a user has denied consent for data collection and use, according to Recital 66 of 2009/136 (Citizens’ Rights Directive) in Irish law.
The cases are important as data protection regulators and courts in the European Union have become increasingly stringent on behavioral advertising campaigns that do not comply with extracting explicit user consent.
This change over the past year is in stark contrast to earlier policies regarding data and processing. It can have significant ramifications regarding how companies deal with ad blockers and the methods they use when it comes to limiting data collection for the foreseeable future.
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