Privacy Complaint Targets Google Over Unsolicited Ad Emails (reuters.com) 20
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has breached a European Union court ruling by sending unsolicited advertising emails directly to the inbox of Gmail users, Austrian advocacy group noyb.eu said on Wednesday in a complaint filed with France's data protection watchdog. The Alphabet unit, whose revenues mainly come from online advertising, should ask Gmail users for their prior consent before sending them any direct marketing emails, noyb.eu said, citing a 2021 decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJUE).
While Google's ad emails may look like normal ones, they include the word "Ad" in green letters on the left-hand side, below the subject of the email, noyb.eu said in its complaint. Also, they do not include a date, the advocacy group added. "It's as if the postman was paid to remove the ads from your mailbox and put his own instead," said Romain Robert, program director at noyb.eu, with reference to Gmail's anti-spam filters that put most unsolicited emails in a separate folder. While any CNIL decision would be only applicable in France, it could compel Google to review its practices in the region.
While Google's ad emails may look like normal ones, they include the word "Ad" in green letters on the left-hand side, below the subject of the email, noyb.eu said in its complaint. Also, they do not include a date, the advocacy group added. "It's as if the postman was paid to remove the ads from your mailbox and put his own instead," said Romain Robert, program director at noyb.eu, with reference to Gmail's anti-spam filters that put most unsolicited emails in a separate folder. While any CNIL decision would be only applicable in France, it could compel Google to review its practices in the region.
DIdn't they agree to it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the terms of service for getting a Gmail account say that Google/Alphabet can send you advertisements, doesn't that mean they are solicited?
If a business literally says "I will give you our product for free if you watch an advert", and the user agrees, France says this is illegal unless the user specifically solicits each individual advertisement?
Makes no sense.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If the terms of service for getting a Gmail account say that Google/Alphabet can send you advertisements, doesn't that mean they are solicited?
If a business literally says "I will give you our product for free if you watch an advert", and the user agrees, France says this is illegal unless the user specifically solicits each individual advertisement?
Makes no sense.
A person agreeing to let you do something illegal does not make it legal. That's not especially unusual.
The world does not owe Google or Facebook etc. a living. If the law makes their business model fail then that's the breaks. It's not like they never get the law changed to support their businesses, is it?
Re:DIdn't they agree to it? (Score:4, Informative)
No, that would mean that the ToS violate the GDPR, which requires consent for processing of personal data for the purpose of direct marketing and doesn't allow tying access to service X with consent for processing of data for purpose Y unless Y is required for the functionality of X.
Re:DIdn't they agree to it? (Score:4, Interesting)
It has been argued in court several times, with varying outcomes, that changing your ToS and trying to grandfather in people, can be illegal, and any or all of those changes do not constitute "Explicit consent".
The "Google can send their own ads to your gmail account without going through a spamfilter" might not have been in the original ToS when people signed up.
So? (Score:3)
I've never had these, so you can clearly opt out and it must be a simple one time thing I did years ago. Why do people feel so entitled to their free services that a one time click on the unsubscribe button is considered so unreasonable?
The analogy is pretty poor too. I opt out of receiving junk mail from any business I use, but here in the UK the Royal Mail delivers flyers and the like to houses with our mail on an almost daily basis. You can opt out easily enough, but it is opt-out not opt-in.
Re: (Score:2)
Same reason spam in general has been seen as a scourge. Physical mail incurs a fairly significant cost to the sender, paying to have the flyers produced and delivered. By contrast to anybody who already has an internet connection and a PC, sending a million spam emails is so close to free it might as well be. I'm sure there's more dollars spent on dealing with spam than there is producing spam by a few orders of magnitude.
Spam should not be allowed. It's far too abusable. And the notion that it should be op
Re: (Score:2)
> the notion that it should be opt-out by default
You mean opt-in by default. Originally in Germany back in the early 2000s biut adopted across EU in national laws, businesses can't assume a default opt-in for something as benign as a newsletter that doesn't promote products and services, just because they have an email address on file. Even when someone is buying from them.
As everybody knows that they aren't Google's customers, but the product, they have even less of a leg to stand on when it comes to un
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah I could have written that much better. Whether it is "assume the user chooses to opt out" or "that the user must opt out after the fact" got mixed up. I meant that users needing to go out of their way to opt out...
my bad
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen claims that if it weren't for junk mail, first class postage would be considerably higher. If true, junk mail is effectively subsidizing regular mail and is a benefit not a problem.
Re: (Score:3)
I've seen claims that if it weren't for junk mail, first class postage would be considerably higher. If true, junk mail is effectively subsidizing regular mail and is a benefit not a problem.
Gangs doing drive-by shootings in my neighborhood increases the police presence, which is a benefit, not a problem
Re: (Score:2)
I never had these either, this topic surprised me, but maybe I am not a target or something...
Who's sending these ad messages? (Score:2)
The article isn't clear to me. Is Google simply delivering the spam messages, or is Google placing them in the inbox somehow? If the latter, I've never seen this sort of message in Gmail, and I've had a gmail account for many years.
Re: (Score:2)
They are not emails at all. They are ads injected into the list of emails in your inbox, much the same as Google search injects ads into your search results.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean if you access gmail with a traditional email client by IMAP or POP, the ads aren't there? People are getting upset that Google has ads on their web pages?
Re: (Score:2)
Oh okay. I rarely use the web interface and have never seen those before. I can see how they would be annoying. But not unexpected when you get email through an advertising company.
Hypocrites (Score:3)