Privacy Group Takes ICO to Court Over Adtech Complaint

The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is being taken to court following its decision to end a complaint against the adtech industry’s use of real-time bidding (RTB).

The adtech complaint was disputing the industry’s compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Tech Crunch reported. The executive director of the Open Rights Group, Jim Killock, and University College London professor Dr. Michael Veale sent the complaint to the ICO in September 2018.

The privacy advocates announced the legal challenge was filed on 21 October, Politico reported.

Several real-time bidding complaints were filed with the ICO over a more-than-two-year timeframe, according to Tech Crunch. The complaints argue RTB auction systems can’t possibly abide by GDPR guidelines to protect private user data. 

According to Forbes, the adtech complaint said real-time bidding systems “broadcast what virtually all internet users read, watch, and listen to online to thousands of companies, without protection of the data once broadcast.”

The legal challenge comes as Europe is probing how adtech companies gather and store private information, then sell the information to target ads using real-time bidding, P0litico reported.

The legal challenge will probably be resolved by next year, according to Politico.

Killock and Veale are worried Google and other websites won’t be held accountable for GDPR breaches because the ICO closed the complaint, Politico reported. 

“It’s pretty clear that under GDPR, everyone is entitled to remedies,” Killock told Politico. “If they can simply dismiss our complaint without doing anything, they will never have to taken action.”

However, in response, the ICO confirmed the RTB investigation was ongoing but has not commented on if or when the case would reopen.

Brave reported in 2018 RTB complaints came from Dublin, Ireland and London, concerning breaches of European data protection laws. 

Realt-time bidding can track and capture the content consumers are looking up, their location, IP address, tracking IDs and what device they are using, according to Brave.

The ICO had its own concern about the use of real-time bidding in the adtech sector in a report last year, Tech Crunch reported.

In December 2019, according to Tech Crunch, Simon McDougall of the ICO pressed for RTB reform in the adtech industry, stating, “We have significant concerns about the lawfulness of the processing of special category data which we’ve seen in the industry, and the lack of explicit consent for that processing.”

If the ICO has concerns about the use of RTB, it’s unclear why it closed the complaint without announcing a decision on reform. 

“The AdTech industry has driven a coach and horses through the GDPR and the ICO’s own investigation has highlighted widespread systemic abuses in the AdTech industry practices,” Killock said in a press release. “But instead of taking action against, it has decided to close the investigation. We are determined to ensure that the law is enforced even when the regulator can’t be bothered to protect our rights and liberties.”

“The ICO is expected to protect individuals against complex misuses of their sensitive data by entire industries acting outside the law, not just the simple, low-hanging fruit it can easily enforce against,” Veale said in the release. “This lawsuit is about stopping the ICO sweeping the most difficult cases under the carpet. Adtech isn’t simple — but dealing with illegal adtech is the ICO’s job.”

Do you think the ICO should reopen the RTB case? Do you think real-time bidding violates privacy laws? Tell us in the comments.

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