German court bans LinkedIn from ignoring "Do Not Track" signals
German court bans LinkedIn from ignoring "Do Not Track" signals
The Berlin Regional Court found LinkedIn's ignoring of "Do Not Track" signals and publishing of profiles without permission to be illegal. The ruling supported consumer control over personal data.
The court found that LinkedIn cannot ignore "Do Not Track" signals sent by users' browsers. These signals allow internet users to opt-out of having their online activities tracked. Despite receiving these signals, LinkedIn still announced on its website that it engages in tracking for analysis and marketing purposes. The court said this communication is misleading, as LinkedIn is legally required to respect the Do Not Track requests.
Additionally, the court banned LinkedIn from automatically making users' profiles publicly visible when they first create an account. This "Profile Visibility" default setting published users' information without their consent, violating data protection regulations. Users must expressly agree before their profiles can be visible to non-members.
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"Germany bans this already illegal thing"... So they double banned it?
If you tell LinkedIn they do something illegal, they'll just ignore you. If you ask a court to tell them, they'll at least have to make a calculation what is cheaper: complying with a court order (less profit from using your data) or ignoring it (more legal fees). We will soon know.
Considering how comically low these fines are, we all know the answer to that one.
Actually, gdpr violation fines are ridiculously high, so at least there's hope that they'll consider complying.
So they should be. Not respecting user privacy should be incredibly costly!
One day I hope a regulator just gets to do day fine minimums.
"The fine for violation is €x OR 120 days of gross profits, whichever is larger."
Fuck gross profits.
Just gross. All income. Make it actually hurt.
Just gross. All income. Make it actually hurt.
That is how the GDPR works.
I was at a company where something shitty we did was eventually fined seven figures by federal regulators, and the CEO laughed because we made that in a month of doing it.
Here’s how it works:
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You commit the shitty act for as long as you can, until the regulators finally catch on and/or have enough of the violation(s).
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You hire a specialty lawyer who was a senior attorney or management at the regulator before shifting to private practice. That lawyer negotiates with his former co-workers/employees for six to nine months, then comes back with your deal.
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Your fine in the deal looks like a big number in a regulator press release, but is usually <25% of the profits you’ve made off the shitty act.
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If you’ve been particularly bad and you’re considered to be dicks, your deal might include a consent decree that attaches to the company and sometimes the execs personally. This is often just an annoyance for big companies, but can be bad for smaller companies whose execs really don’t want to be personally named, so you’ll sometimes see companies negotiate for a higher fine in exchange for removing execs’ personal names from the decree.
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You pay the fine, sometimes in installments, and do the lightest possible rework of your business practices to bring you into compliance, and drive on. If you’re under a consent decree, you’re a bit more disciplined about reforming your practices. Otherwise, you look forward to the day when the consent decree ends, and you can backslide into the bad behavior again.
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This is civil law, not criminal. It needs to be brought to court, otherwise if everybody just quietly ignores it it can go on forever unchallenged. Which is exactly what has happened so far: technically, ignoring "do not track" is in breach of GDPR but it's pretty hard to prove that a company does it. What's different about this case is that LinkedIn publicly declared they ignore it, which made it an open and shut case. And now that they got the ball rolling it's going to be easier to go after other companies.