Ireland’s data watchdog slammed for letting adtech carry on ‘biggest breach of all time’

A dossier of proof detailing just how the on-line ad targetting sector profiles Net consumers’ intimate characteristics without their own knowledge (or) consent was posted today by this Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), piling extra stress on the nation’s statistics watchdog to take (2) enforcement action over what complainants contend is the “largest statistics breach of all time”.

The publication follows a as of now two-year-old case registered with Ireland’s Statistics Protection Commission (DPC) claiming unlawful exploitation of personal statistics via the programmatic advertising Real-Time Bidding (RTB) procedure — involving dominant RTB systems devised by Google & the Net Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The Irish DPC opened an inquiry into Google’s  on-line Ad Exchange in May 2019, following a case registered by Dr Johnny Ryan (afterwards in Brave, as of now a Sr. fellow in the ICCL) in Sep 2018 — however 2 yrs. on that case, like so numerous main cross-border GDPR instances, remains unresolved.

&, indeed, several RTB cases have being registered with regulators around the EU however none have yet being resolved. It’s a main black mark over the bloc’s flagship statistics protection framework.

“Sep 2024 marks 2 yrs. from my official case to the Irish Statistics Protection Commission regarding the “Real-Time Bidding” statistics breach. This submission shows the implications of 2 yrs. of failure to impose,” writes Ryan within the record.

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