Pinterest faces EU privacy complaint over tracking ads
When it comes to privacy nightmares, Pinterest is unlikely to be the first social app that springs to mind.
When it comes to privacy nightmares, Pinterest is unlikely to be the first social app that springs to mind. But the visual discovery engine’s use of tracking ads is the target of the latest complaint from European privacy rights non-profit noyb, which accuses it of breaching the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by failing to obtain consent from users to being tracked and profiled for advertising.
The GDPR allows for penalties of up to 4% of global annual turnover for confirmed breaches so such complaints can lead to substantial sanctions for tech giants.
While Pinterest has generally flown under the radar, with regard to online privacy issues — especially compared to other mainstream ad-funded social services (such as Facebook) — it’s worth recalling that the company’s tracking and profiling was pulled center stage in the tragic case of the suicide in 2017 of the U.K. schoolgirl, Molly Russell. She had pro-suicide content pushed into her social feeds by a number of apps, including Pinterest.
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