The Austrian Federal Administrative Court confirmed that DerStandard’s “Pay or Okay” model breaches the GDPR. Users had to either accept tracking by hundreds of third parties or pay a subscription. Authorities ruled that this coercive model invalidates consent, which must be free and specific. Real consent rates drop to 1–7% when asked transparently, but the … Read more
Italy’s Privacy Guarantor has requested information from DeepSeek AI providers in China about their data collection practices. Authorities are concerned about potential risks to the personal data of millions of Italians. Key inquiries include data sources, the legal basis for collection, storage locations, and the use of web scraping. Regulators want to understand how DeepSeek … Read more
Otelier, a platform used by hotel chains worldwide for managing reservations, transactions, and billing, has fallen victim to a data breach that exposed the personal information of hundreds of thousands of guests. The affected individuals include patrons of major hotel chains like Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt, according to Troy Hunt of the data breach search … Read more
Bunnings, Australia’s largest hardware chain, has been accused of violating the privacy of hundreds of thousands of customers by using facial recognition technology in over 60 stores. According to the OAIC, Australia’s privacy regulator, the system was overly intrusive and operated without obtaining proper customer consent. The OAIC found that Bunnings failed to meet transparency … Read more
The FTC revealed that major social media and streaming platforms, like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, engage in large-scale user surveillance for profit. The investigation found that these companies collect and monetize vast amounts of personal data. This raises serious privacy concerns, especially for children. The report highlights how these companies’ reliance on targeted ads drives … Read more
Victims of Finland’s largest psychotherapy data breach are seeking higher compensation. In 2020, a hacker stole sensitive information from 40,000 clients of Vastaamo, including patient records, and used it for extortion. While the Finnish government has offered compensation ranging from €500 to €1500, lawyers argue that this is insufficient, given the severe privacy violations the … Read more
The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) has fined Clearview AI over €30 million for illegally scraping facial images from the internet. Despite previous fines from other European regulators, Clearview continued its violations, amassing a database of 30 billion facial images for use in law enforcement. The AP emphasized that Clearview violated the GDPR by creating … Read more
AI-generated content is becoming ubiquitous on the internet, raising concerns for the future of AI models. Models like ChatGPT are trained using online content, giving rise to the issue of “model collapse” as synthetic content proliferates. In the AI era, the ancient symbol of a snake consuming its own tail, the ouroboros, takes on new … Read more
Spotify is facing a fine of approximately €5 million ($5.4M) in Sweden for breaching data access rights of users in the European Union. Te fine highlights the challenges faced by European users in upholding their data protection rights. The complaint against Spotify was filed by the privacy rights organization noyb more than four years ago. … Read more
Amazon’s surveillance doorbell company Ring has reached a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission which will require the company to pay $5.8 million over its inability to keep private footage and audio collected from users’ homes. This action stems from a collection of privacy violations that occurred between 2017 and 2020. Ring customers brought … Read more