Facebook-owner Meta is facing a showdown in the High Court over how it collects users’ personal profiling data to target ads – without offering an opt-out – in a case which one legal expert claims has “prospects of success”.
Technology and human rights campaigner Tanya O’Carroll insists the company is breaching data protection law – currently the UK GDPR – because it will not let her stop the user profiling it uses to sell ads.
O’Carroll claims she was “bombarded” with ads for baby products and services after becoming a mother in 2017 but when she attempted to turn off the ads using Facebook’s settings, it did not work.
She subsequently found out that Facebook had tagged her with more than 700 characteristics based on her activity, including data predicting what films she watched, where she wanted to go on holiday, her shopping habits, the clothes she liked, her political stance and health, relationship and family matters, which fall in to out of bounds “special category data”.
O’Carroll told The Times: “Homosexuality was one of them. The name of a UK political party was one of them. Feminism was one of them. These are things that are actually just considered sensitive, protected characteristics, things that could reveal things about you that really an advertiser should not be seeing.”
Although Meta maintains it is now changing its policies to exclude special category data, O’Carroll argues that users should be able to opt out.
Meta argues that GDPR’s opt out clause law does not apply and that O’Carroll has agreed to the targeting in the terms and conditions of the service. Her lawyers say that the opt-out is inviolable.
Meta settled a case with the US Department of Justice in June after its housing ads were blocked from people on the basis of race, age, sex and other characteristics.
O’Carroll said she did not object to being advertised to and is not seeking damages, but wants the chance to opt out. She added: “What I really want in this case with the right to object is just choice.”
When asked why she did not leave Facebook, O’Carroll said: “I’ve lived my entire adult life on Facebook. It’s a repository of connections and relationships I’ve made in other parts of the world, of my family that I don’t have in the UK. It is just not something that people feel that they can leave and even if they wanted to, where do they go? Because it’s a monopoly.”
Ravi Naik, a lawyer with the digital rights agency AWO is representing O’Carroll. He said: “Meta is straining to concoct legal arguments to deny our client even has this right. But Tanya’s claim is straightforward; it will hopefully breathe life back into the rights we are all guaranteed under the GDPR.”
This is not the first – nor is it likely to be the last – time Facebook has been sued over its data practices, but Jonathan Compton, a partner at DMH Stallard, told Decision Marketing: “Tanya is challenging the entire basis of Facebook’s business model. She tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the profiling using the Facebook settings.
“One of the GDPR rights is to have personal data ‘used in a way that is limited to only what is necessary’. Also, there is a right to have data erased.
“If the court upholds her case, she may have significantly undermined Facebook’s operations in the UK and, I suspect, the EU. At first glance, it looks as if she has reasonable prospects of success.”
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