On April 9, 2019, the UK Data Protection Authority, the Information Commissioner Officer (ICO), served a monetary penalty notice under section 55A of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) of around $ 520,000. The fined company (Bounty) shared the personal data of over 14 million individuals to a number of organizations including credit reference […]
On February 7, 2019, the Bundeskartellamt, the German antitrust authority, prohibited Facebook from combining data concerning German Facebook users gathered also from third party websites when the user didn’t give voluntary consent to this practice. The decision concerns all private users of Facebook based in Germany. According to the Bundeskartellamt’s decision, until now, individuals […]
On December 19, 2018, Advocate General Bobek, published his opinion in case C-40/17, deeming that anyone who enters the Facebook “Like” button on his website can be considered a joint controller. In this case, a German fashion online retailer embedded a Facebook’s ‘Like’ button in its website. As a result, when users landed on the […]
In November 2018, a German local court, the Amtsgericht Diez, decided on a claim for immaterial damages under Art. 82.1, GDPR. According to this source, on May 25, 2018, Plaintiff received an e-mail in which Plaintiff’s consent to receive a newsletter was requested. An email of this sort is considered spam under German law and […]
On September 11, 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) began hearing evidence from over 70 stakeholders in the case whose judgement shall outline the territorial scope of the right to be forgotten. The panel of 15 CJEU judges will rule in 2019. The request for a preliminary ruling (Case C-507/17) was […]
On July 12, 2018, the German federal court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) overturned the judgment of the Berlin’s highest state court (Kammergerichts), which had denied the parents’ access to their daughter’s Facebook account. The case involved a mother trying to access the deceased 15-year-old daughter’s Facebook account in order to understand the cause of death. With its […]
On June 5, 2018, the European Court of Justice (CJEU), issued its preliminary ruling in C‑210/16, opining on the definition of data controller, applicable national law, and jurisdiction under EU data protection law according to Directive 95/46/EC. According to the CJEU’s judgement, EU companies that have been advertising through Facebook can be considered data controllers […]
The right to be forgotten has been judicially recognized by the CJEU with the Google Spain judgment (Case C-131/12). According to the judgement, Europeans have the right to disappear from search engine’s results under certain conditions. The National Commission of Information Technologies and Liberties (CNIL), Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés, rejected some complaints […]
On June 27, 2017, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (“ECHR”) issued its judgment in the case of Satakunnan Markkinapörssi Oy and Satamedia Oy v. Finland (application no. 931/13) holding that the publication of personal tax information does not violate Article 10 (freedom of expression) of European Convention on Human Rights. […]
On December 20, 2016, the Tribunale di Roma held the unauthorized use of a digital signature smart card could nullify an electronically signed agreement. In this case the Plaintiff had denied the digital subscription of an agreement that transferred stock ownership. Since the share transfer agreement was signed electronically, the judge found that the Codice dell’Amministrazione […]