Jurisdiction(s):
European Union

EU Advocate General opinion: GDPR curbs personalised ad targeting—data minimisation bars indefinite processing; ‘manifestly public’ data insufficient without consent; potential limits on scraping

Published on: 26 April 2024

Published by an LexisNexis EU Law expert

Legal News

Article summary

Social media companies face two possible restrictions on the way they can process data for personalised ads if judges follow a legal opinion issued for the EU’s top court on 25 April 2024

A non-binding opinion by Advocate General Athanasios Rantos for the Court of Justice, in the dispute between Meta Platforms and Austrian privacy advocate Max Schrems, signals two curbs on how platforms handle data for personalised advertising. He indicated that EU privacy rules bar firms from processing such data indefinitely, and that the mere fact information is public does not automatically justify its use for targeting ads.

Data minimisation under the EU GDPR means companies cannot run targeted advertising with open-ended scope, either in duration or in the breadth of data involved, ruling out processing ‘without restriction as to time or type of data’.
The case also examines whether information disclosed in a statement becomes ‘manifestly public’ under the GDPR, and what that status would mean for deploying such data in ad targeting.

According to Katharina Raabe-Stuppnig, representing Schrems, Meta has amassed a vast reservoir of user information; if the court adopts the opinion, only a small fraction of that pool would remain available for advertising purposes...

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