Does your business use profile-based advertising? Here is how to audit it

Does your business use profile-based advertising / personalised advertising, whether as publisher, advertiser or adtech intermediary? You will want to tune in to the free webinar this Friday at noon CET in which I will be discussing key topics regarding the GDPR, DSA and ePrivacy rules and the “consent or pay” debate – as well […]

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Critical analysis of bias claims in regulatory appointments

Don’t know the candidates, the selection criteria, or how the Irish DPC appointment committee was selected. Still I find it a bit unfortunate that a formal complaint is being placed based on a person’s past experience. Nothing in the complaint filed before the European Commission (irrespective of its (in)admissibility) demonstrates any actual conflict of interest. […]

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Polish Supreme Administrative Court: IP addresses and cookies

This is a big one – the Polish Supreme Administrative Court confirms that cookies & IP addresses aren’t always personal data (even in case of use of Google Analytics), and the burden of proof that they are in specific circumstances rests on the national authority, not the controller. It’s another good application of the EU […]

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Defining personal data: Danish and Polish authority insights

I received a few questions re the recent Danish & Polish positions on what is “personal data”. Here’s my take: 1. Summary of SRB, building on the CJEU’s Breyer/Scania/OLAF judgments As highlighted in my deep dive on the SRB judgment of the EU Court of Justice (CJEU), information that is pseudonymised (= “Pseu’dData”) by an […]

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CNIL study: user perceptions of paid services and ads

Good & bad of the new CNIL study on perception of digital services and readiness to pay vs targeted advertising: 1. “Paid offers that allow them to better protect their personal data”: This line in the CNIL write-up shows part of the issue. Campaigners and some regulators view “pay or OK” approaches – i.e. “subscription […]

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German Labour Court: balancing access rights and third-party interests

Interesting judgment from Germany regarding the scope of the right of access – and in particular the extent to which the rights of others (here: a person making a statement) are taken into account to exclude (or not) certain information from the scope of a response. In this particular case, the Labour Court found that […]

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Political advertising and Digital Services Act critique

You won’t often find in-depth and reasoned articles on the Political Ads Regulation and Digital Services Act – this is a good one. I don’t agree with everything that is said, but it definitely deserves a wide audience for pointing out some of the issues caused by legislative ambitions detached from practical challenges of compliance.

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Cookie audit strategies: expert insights

Great insights from Brian Clifton on the scope of cookie audits.

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European Parliament approves GDPR procedural regulation

European Parliament votes in favour of GDPR additional procedural rules. I wrote a few months ago about the concerns I have with the GDPR Procedural Regulation (GPR), highlighting its potential for abuse regarding the scope of complaints – see input here: https://lnkd.in/ef527U3N Today, the European Parliament just voted in favour of this unfortunately flawed piece […]

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Ad blockers, liability, and the future of web content

Ad blocker on? Aside from meaning “I want all content for free, no matter the cost for the provider”, did you check who decides which ads/scripts/cookies to allow or block, and if this is even legal? Several browser extensions (even some browsers) now prevent certain scripts/cookies/… from loading. This creates “dark traffic”, web traffic that […]

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