A recent complaint was filed against Google and some marketing firms in Great Britain and Ireland. The complaint was filed by Brave, a blockchain-based web browser founded by Brendan Eich.
If the name Brendan Eich rings a bell, it is because he previous founded the Java programming language and also helped found Mozilla.
Brave Triggered
The essence of the complaint is simply to report Google and the agencies, but also to trigger a European privacy regulation in the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The regulation once triggered, will implement an EU-wide investigation.
Primarily, this is meant to serve as a test case for the European Data Protection Board in a bid to improve privacy laws.
The biggest aim of GDPR is to ensure that user privacy laws are protected at all costs and that users get to decide that how much their data companies are allowed to have.
According to the complaint being made, Google and other companies are violating these rights and trying to skirt these rules.
“There is a massive and systematic data breach at the heart of the behavioral advertising industry. Despite the two-year lead-in period before the GDPR, adtech companies have failed to comply,” Brave’s chief policy officer Johnny Ryan told Reuters recently.
The complaint also states that when users visit a website, their details are given to dozens of companies without their knowledge or consent for ad placement.
Violation of Privacy
These actions are a violation of GDPR regulations, says the complaint. GDPR requirements state that user data is only to be stored and not unlawfully used or lost.
Google, however, denies these claims and says that it has only ever used user data in a way that complies with GDPR standards.
Brave as a product works to prevent his misuse of data. As a browser, Brave prevents websites from harvesting user data by acting like an ad-blocker and a private browser.
This new privacy law will not only affect large firms such as Google but also the smaller firms that act as middlemen between Google and users, helping them to collect the data.
User privacy has become more and more talked about in the tech world and the world as a whole. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal that took place earlier this year involving Facebook, more and more tech firms are under fire for data mishandling.
