Tech firms push users to share information
Print Edition
Facebook and Google are pushing users to share private information by offering 鈥渋nvasive鈥 and limited default options despite new EU data protection laws aimed at giving users more control and choice, a government study said yesterday.
The Norwegian Consumer Council found that the US tech giants鈥 privacy updates clash with the new General Data Protection Regulation, which forces companies to clarify what choices people have when sharing private information.
鈥淭hese companies manipulate us into sharing information about ourselves,鈥 the council鈥檚 director of digital services, Finn Myrstad, said in a statement.
鈥(This) is at odds with the expectations of consumers and the intention of the new Regulation,鈥 the 2018 study, entitled 鈥淒eceived By Design,鈥 concluded.
Myrstad said the practices showed 鈥渁 lack of respect for their users, and are circumventing the notion of giving consumers control of their personal data.鈥
The case for the new laws has been boosted by the recent scandal over the harvesting of Facebook users鈥 data by British consultancy Cambridge Analytica for the 2016 US presidential election.
Information for the report was collected from mid-April to early June, weeks after EU rules came into force.
The report exposed that Facebook and Google often set the least privacy-friendly option as a default and that users rarely change pre-selected settings.
Privacy-friendly choices 鈥渞equire more clicks and are often hidden,鈥 it said.
鈥淚n many cases, the services obscure the fact that users have very few actual choices, and that comprehensive data sharing is accepted just by using the service.鈥
The EU has billed the GDPR as the biggest shake-up of data privacy regulations since the birth of the web.
The social media giant and Google separately already face their first official complaints under the new law after an Austrian privacy campaigner accused them of forcing users to give their consent to the use of their personal information.
Companies can be fined up to 20 million euros (US$24 million) or 4 percent of annual global turnover for breaching the strict new data rules for the EU.
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