Dutch consumer groups sue Google over its entire business model

A group of Dutch consumer orgs sued Google today for what it alleges are "large-scale privacy violations." The action was first announced in May, and since then 82,000 Dutch citizens have signed up as part of the claim. The group, which said it launched court action today, alleges that Google has trampled over Dutch and …

[elsergiovolador]

Illness

You can tell whether someone is worried about their health in your household if suddenly you get adverts related to different health issues.

It's also "funny" if you have a guest over and soon enough you get adverts about girls next door eagerly waiting for you.

Google business model should be illegal.

[v13]

Re: Illness

This is actually a real problem. The reason you're getting these is probably your ISP or your TV. People are focused on Google but forget that ISPs and Smart TVs now track traffic and use that for promoting ads. It works be interested to see which company sends you that ads.

Unfortunately the EU isn't looking that way. How many people do you think realize that their TV or their Xbox/PS are building an Ad profile for them?

[SonofRojBlake]

Re: Illness

I assume my TV has been building an ad profile for me... very badly.

I stream content from Channel 4. It's interspersed with adverts I can't skip (although I can mute them...). I have noticed two very specific things about these adverts:

1. their supposed targeting is absolutely baffling. Example: I am bombarded with ads for Coutts, the Top Person's bank, a place I'm given to understand requires customers to have a current account balance over three million quid before they'll even be considered worth having on the books. Why this company is advertising to my broke ass is beyond me. In fact, why this company is advertising AT ALL is beyond me. I don't think I've ever in my life seen a TV ad for Lamborghinis or Patek Phillipe watches - I've always assumed that people in the market for such things will find out about them by other means. So why are bankers to royalty slumming it in the ad breaks in Taskmaster?

2. The ads repeat. I don't mean that I'll see the same ad several times in the same night. I don't even mean I'll see the same ad several times in the same show (three ad breaks in Taskmaster, and I'd not comment or notice, probably, if the same ad was in each break). No, I mean I'll see the same ad repeated several times in the SAME AD BREAK. The record, so far, was an ad shot like a horror movie with a whole bunch of young, pretty people pushing Samsung's latest pholdy phone. When the ad break started, I look down from the TV to my (not-a-Samsung) phone, but didn't bother to mute. I looked back up when, at the end of the ad, the exact same ad started again. "Huh", I thought, and looked back down again, assuming there was some kind of cute "spot the difference" gimmick going on that I had no interest in. Then back up, when the ad started for a third time. And a fourth. And a fifth. There was no gimmick - Ch4 were just showing me the same ad five times in a row.

There were six advertisements in that ad break - and five of them were the same ad, over and over and over and over and over again. I can't imagine that's what the people placing the ad actually want, is it?

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: Illness

I've seen the Coutts ones too. No idea why. At my house everything is subject to regulation by Pi-Hole and phones go over VPN, whereas at my SO's everything is slurped by whoever wants to. We also see the Coutts ads at her place so it's either based entirely on the shows we watch or they're shown to everybody.

[Evil Scot]

Re: Illness

Do you find the nagging full page "Disable your ad blocker" annoying?

I get it in the embedded Webkit browser which Adblock does not run in.

I can has Cheezeburger but not Rasberry Pi-Hole.

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: Illness

I've never seen that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Illness

> So why are bankers to royalty slumming it in the ad breaks in Taskmaster?

Coutts are a bit strait-laced and haven't quite figured out Taskmaster. They think you are just very interested in hour-long infomercials about ordering people around and whether that design of throne is going to be right for you, so clearly...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Illness

Sony has a crazy ad patent for TV ads https://www.creativebloq.com/sony-tv-patent

Although I don't think they may use it they probably will or will try

You basiccly talk / yell to the tv

[katrinab]

Re: Illness

I'm guessing the attraction of Coutts to rich people is that they can flash their card around and let people know they are rich, which only works if normal people actually know that Coutts is a rich person's bank. Otherwise it is an obscure bank that nobody has heard of, and flashing the card doesn't have the desired effect.

[Robin]

Re: Illness

Aha but I found a way to keep one step ahead, by already searching for online medication, cryptocurrency investment advice, hot girls in my area and also I send money to random Nigerian princes as well just to be sure.

[aerogems]

Re: Illness

My father chose not to take my advice about buying a flagship device when he needed a new phone, despite my explaining that you either pay more in cash up front or you pay by having your privacy invaded, few to no software updates, and shitty hardware. Fast forward to a few months ago and he's looking to buy a new bed. He went to a couple of local stores, and then said how as soon as he got home he started getting ads for beds and mattresses. I just sort of shrugged and reminded him that I explained this would happen when he bought his phone.

There are also cases where Facebook was able to piece together connections between people. You'd have someone doing sex work that is technically not legal, but also not the sort of thing that's generally hurting anyone, so often gets overlooked. The sex workers might have a completely separate phone for their professional and personal lives, but just because their phones were both in the same geographic location at the same time, Facebook would send messages suggesting they send a friend request. Thus outing the sex worker and providing their real name. Whatever you may think of the vocation of these people, it's creepy to think that just being nearby someone at a Starbucks or something could be enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Illness

> Whatever you may think of the vocation of these people, it's creepy to think that just being nearby someone at a Starbucks or something could be enough.

I know the feeling. Go into Costas and just get this odd chill down the spine: someone there could even be in advertising! Puts you right off your mocha; they are just walking around among us! Then FaceBook starts suggesting you might want to join a seminar for "creatives" - I mean, they could be sending that stuff to impressionable teenagers!

[aerogems]

Re: Illness

Better than accountants, who are some kind of offshoot of the troll family I think.

[rskurat]

Re: Illness

It might be more effective to publish Google employees' search histories. Difficult to do at scale, but beautifully poetic justice

[b0llchit]

Waiting for that crippling fine

I hope they win and Google must pay restitution to any and all EU citizen they hold data about without voluntary and explicit consent where the burden of consent proof will be reversed such that Google is held to having data illegally collected from each EU citizen, unless Google can prove they got voluntary and explicit consent for any and all purposes that Google uses data for.

One is allowed to dream nice dreams, not?

[Alumoi]

Re: Waiting for that crippling fine

Voluntary and explicit consent?

Hmm, you never had to set up an Android phone, right? You must consent to a lot of crap in order to be able to use your phone.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Waiting for that crippling fine

You must consent

The "must" is a problem under GDPR. Consenting to data collection beyond what's needed to deliver the service should not be a condition of provided the service.

[Pseu Donyme]

Re: Waiting for that crippling fine

Indeed, GDPR Article 7(4)*: "When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract."

GDPR enforcement has been lacking though, the worst offender (as far as the impact goes) is Ireland's DPC** (where Google, Facebook, etc. are domiciled for EU purposes). :(

* https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&qid=1694602882952#d1e2001-1-1

** see e.g. https://noyb.eu/en/just-eu-55-million-whatsapp-dpc-finally-gives-finger-edpb

[cookieMonster]

Re: Waiting for that crippling fine

Yep the Irish DPC is a spineless disgrace.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: Waiting for that crippling fine

Never understood why Irelands taxation policy is allowed by the remainder of the EU. Ireland is actively draining taxation benefits for their home country and the remainder of the EU just allow it. Replace Ireland with LX etc

[Mike 137]

Re: Waiting for that crippling fine

"You must consent to a lot of crap in order to be able to use your phone"

It's worse than that. These days you have to run masses of javascript from typically unrecognisable and certainly unverifiable 3rd parties in order to make use of most web sites, and unless you take action to block it, all this runs silently without any attempt at obtaining consent. I have an analyser in place and on occasion I've noted requests to run scripts from in excess of 20 such 3rd parties on a single page. In most cases, pages fail to render unless at least some of these 3rd party scripts are allowed to run. The big snag is that it's almost impossible to establish which are the minimum scripts actually required for the page to work and which are the extraneous garbage, unless of course you reverse engineer the (commonly obfuscated) code. Indeed in some cases, by a dirty trick, the garbage has to be allowed to run for the page to operate.

There's been a huge fuss about 3rd party cookies but nobody has bothered about 3rd party scripts (despite their use as trackers, which makes them restricted by the relevant legislation just like tracking cookies).

Looks like this is beyond fixing already, despite any penalties or new laws.

[Anonymous Coward]

in excess of 20 such 3rd parties

... only 20? Pikers.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Waiting for that crippling fine

Don't forget informed.

[b0llchit]

Re: Waiting for that crippling fine

Indeed, voluntary informed consent is the key.

But, who are we kidding? Most government sites aren't even accessible without involuntary consent...

[jmch]

Re: Waiting for that crippling fine

"I hope they win and Google must..."

If they win, Google will have to "...call(ing) a halt to the alleged privacy violations", which as the article headline points out, torpedoes their whole business model. (although to be fair, their actual revenue comes from advertisers willing to pay, so they can still sell as many adverts as they want without needing to profile / target users)

[naive]

Dutch should buy some mirrors

In order to see what they are doing themselves. I work in IT services, see many healthcare organizations move their systems off-prem to Azure without any second thoughts about the impact on privacy sensitive information of EU citizens that is moved into US jurisdiction.

It involves semi public institutions like banks, hospitals and governmental institutions who are engaging in those violations without ever being questioned about this.

Making a lot of noise about google picking up that one is searching information about drilling appliances and slapping a few ads, is petty.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Dutch should buy some mirrors

Report them if you see it.

[Paul 195]

Re: Dutch should buy some mirrors

>> Making a lot of noise about google picking up that one is searching information about drilling appliances and slapping a few ads, is petty.

That's not all google is doing though. They track as many aspects of user behaviour as they can across as many devices as they can, and then combine that data to build up a profile. It's invasive behaviour, and they are very secretive about what they are doing. GDPR etc don't go far enough. The internet giants need to be subject to the same level of scrutiny that they apply to the population, and fined every time they use data for a purpose that users haven't explicitly agreed to.

You can sell advertising on the internet, and target it pretty well too, without needing the huge data warehouses Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, etc have built.

[Pete Sdev]

Re: Dutch should buy some mirrors

Fairly sure that MS has a big Azure cluster in the Netherlands. Certainly block enough scraping/exploit-searching bots from that direction.

While it's obviously trivial for MS to access that data from outside the EU (as with any US cloud provider), technically it's still being stored on Dutch soil.

[Khaptain]

Attack the advertisers to get results

Google only makes its revenue through the advertisers that pay for the platform. They are the ones actively encouraging Google et al to go further into the privacy of everyone's personal info.

The advertisers and marketeers are the true scum l, they are the bottom feeding parasites that will do anything to sell their wares. They don't truly care whether it's Google or Microsoft , just as long as they get into the first page of results..

[sabroni]

Re: The advertisers and marketeers are the true scum

Of course, poor Google are nobly trying to get the very best ads they can possibly have in front of our faces and evil advertisers forced them to collate all the data into privacy busting user profiles.

Pity the poor Chocolate Factory, what else could it do?

[b0llchit]

Re: The advertisers and marketeers are the true scum

It is the fault of the consumer! They use our service so they are to blame for what is on the service. Otherwise, they would not use our service.

_{^{or so they want us to believe}}

[Spanners]

Re: Attack the advertisers to get results

I like to think that adverts don't work well on me.

I rarely notice them. If ever one becomes annoyingly hard to ignore or it reminds me of inappropriate behaviour on their part, I will just put them on my "try not to do business with this lot" mental list.

[UCAP]

Re: Attack the advertisers to get results

My strategy is much simpler - I use an ad blocker, so I don't see any ads.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Attack the advertisers to get results

This doesn't work in all cases:

- Ads that come from the same domain as the content, so can't be blocked by pi-hole

- TV and Radio ads (if you watch/listen to these, or are exposed to anyone who does)

- Magazine ads (if you read magazines)

- Billboard ads (if you ever go outside in a built-up area)

- Any other form of insidious ad that ad-spaffers might find a way of pushing into your eyes/ears.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Attack the advertisers to get results

I find that ads are often directly counterproductive for me, and the ones that aren't are simply ineffective.

Direct contacts:

Contact me via unsolicited email or phone call? I will NEVER do business with you. You're already breaking the law, so I'll never trust you.

Contact me via unsolicited postal mail? I'll call and politely ask to not get mailed again (but won't count it against you); mail me again and you're on my "won't do business with" list. Keep mailing me after multiple requests and I'll go bigger; it took a Better Business Bureau complaint to get Spectrum to quit mailing me, even after 6 months of opt-outs, and that complaint is PUBLIC and PERMANENT.

Contact me via solicited postal mail? Yeah, right, like I asked for it? See above.

General ads:

Website ads? Ad blockers stop most of it, the vast majority of others are something I'd never be interested in. I've clicked a couple of times on website ads, but mostly to send a little money to the site, rather than because I was actually interested.

Search ads? I know to look for "Ad" or "Sponsored" in the first few links, and **ALWAYS** skip them. No exceptions. I think some ads appear on the right side of the screen, depending on search engine, but I don't even look.

Phone app ads? As 95% of them are obvious scams ("Get paid for playing video games!" "Get 10000000 Robux for installing this app!", Temu), I naturally assume anything advertised there is a scam and won't touch it.

TV ads? I use Netflix, and that's it. No ads.

Radio ads? My usual station has very, very few ads (listener-supported). Never really heard anything I was interested in.

Edit:

And here on El Reg, I skip anything marked Sponsored, AdversarialAdvertorial, Webinar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I like to think that adverts don't work well on me

If you are a GOM or GOW (Grumpy Old Man or Woman) then unless it is for things like funeral plans and over 50's life insurance you are not on the hit list for AD Slingers.

I do my best to block the lot of them with an Ad blocker but I don't stream any music or tv or films so one attack vector is DOA.

All my TV is recorded from FreeSat and I can skip the ads on those shows when playing them back.

It will get worse as the Ad Slingers start to realise that they are fighting a battle of diminishing returns. The are having to sling more ads just to stand still. Good. I hope they all catch a fatal disease and die a horrible death.

As for Google. If I have to enable google.com in order to view a site, I simply go somewhere else.

FSCK Google.

[jmch]

Re: Attack the advertisers to get results

"the advertisers that pay for the platform.... ...actively encouraging Google et al to go further into the privacy of everyone's personal info."

The advertisers want the most bang for their buck which is why they are willing to pay more to advertise to, say, "20-30 year old female with a high-paying job" rather than "anyone viewing a fashion website", but ultimately it's a fallacy peddled by the likes of Google that they can send adverts only to the people the advertisers want. In the end, the advertiser only has Google's word for it that their advert was seen X times, or that it was seen by a "20-30 year old female with a high-paying job", and not a penniless pensioner, or that it was seen by a real person not a bot, or indeed that it was seen at all.

AFAIK the way Google gets it's revenue is that advertisers pay into an account, and Google dips into that account whenever it wants based on ad impressions and prices that it alone controls, and over which advertisers have minimal oversight. Even if advertisers aren't getting screwed (and there are many stories of Google rigging ad auctions in it's favour, miscounting ad views etc), the potential conflict of interest is astounding.

[Anonymous Coward]

They can track me if they want

But they’ll never get a straight answer out of me.

Location aside, they have no idea.

[My-Handle]

Re: They can track me if they want

Admirable sentiment, and one I also try to implement as best I can.

But one's rights to privacy shouldn't be dependant on having the expert knowledge and skills to defend it.