Buy a phone, get a tracker: unauthorized tracking code illegally installed on Android phones
EDRi's member noyb launched further action against Google’s AAID (Android Advertising Identifier), following similar complaints against Apple’s IDFA. The somewhat hidden ID allows Google and all apps on the phone to track a user and combine information about online and mobile behaviour. While these trackers clearly require the users’ consent (as known from “cookie banners”), Google neglects this legal requirement. noyb therefore filed a complaint against Google’s tracking code AAID.
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Buy a phone, get a tracker: unauthorized tracking code illegally installed on Android phones
EDRi's member noyb launched further action against Google’s AAID (Android Advertising Identifier), following similar complaints against Apple’s IDFA. The somewhat hidden ID allows Google and all apps on the phone to track a user and combine information about online and mobile behaviour. While these trackers clearly require the users’ consent (as known from “cookie banners”), Google neglects this legal requirement. noyb therefore filed a complaint against Google’s tracking code AAID.
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Delete first, think later
The proposed Digital Services Act wants to push online platforms to quickly remove illegal content. But it uses a sledgehammer on a most intricate challenge: moderating online speech. The result would crush freedom of expression instead of enabling it. This is the second blog post in a new series dedicated to the EU’s proposed Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.
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Targeted Online: How Big Tech’s business model sells your deepest secrets for profit
Surveillance-based advertising which is currently the business model used by Google, Facebook and many others is harmful to people and to society as a whole because it encourages the spread of disinformation. It's also bad for the media who lose control of their ad space and suffer from decreasing revenue as a result.
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Surveillance-based advertising: An industry broken by design and by default
Most online advertising today relies on huge amounts of personal data extracted from people without their knowledge. EDRi’s new guide book “Targeted Online” sheds light on this opaque data industry and explores how EU law should regulate it. This is the first blog post in a new series dedicated to the EU’s proposed Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.
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The companies in control of our secret identities
EDRi member Privacy International published a research on ad tech companies' data collection practices which are employed to create an assumed picture of you. The study shows that the profiles created for the data subjects are based on information pieced together from incomplete data and using marketing algorithms. Hence, this data forms an uncanny picture of yourself, one that you may not have voluntarily revealed, a digital shadow over which you have very little practical control.
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How Big Tech maintains its dominance
As Big Tech deepens its dominance into new public domains, major issues arise around fundamental rights, democracy and justice. This article reflects the conversation that took place at the 2021 EPDS Civil Society Summit which was part of #PrivacyCamp21.
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#PrivacyCamp21: Event Summary
The theme of the 9th edition of Privacy Camp was "Digital rights for change: Reclaiming infrastructures, repairing the future" and included thirteen sessions on a variety of topics. The event was attended by 250 people. If you missed the event or want a reminder of what happened in the session, find the session summaries below.
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Online political ads – a study of inequality in transparency standards
In its new report, EDRi member PI looks into the implementation of transparency tools by Facebook, Google and Twitter in relation to political advertising. This work was produced in collaboration with partner organisations InternetLab and ELSAM.
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The EU’s attempt to regulate Big Tech: What it brings and what is missing
This week, the European Commission has proposed two long-awaited pieces of digital legislation, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. Despite a number of good provisions, there are also major shortcomings which must be addressed to guarantee the protection of digital rights.
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Big Tech’s dominance: only laws can limit its power
Big Tech companies like Facebook have grown so large that the U.S. antitrust authority F.T.C. is considering breaking them up. We need laws that limit the power tech firms wields over our lives.
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Benefiting whom? An overview of companies profiting from “digital welfare”
Could private companies be the only ones really profiting from digital welfare? This overview from EDRi member Privacy International looks at the big players.
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A vicious circle? Enabling privacy-friendly alternatives to behavioural advertising
EDRi member Panoptykon Foundation published a report “To Track or Not to Track: Towards Privacy-Friendly and Sustainable Advertising” which argues that there is only one winner in this supposed “win-win” situation: the ad tech industry.
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