Data protection complaints against Spiegel, Heise and others
Noyb, the organization led by data protection activist Max Schrems, has filed data protection complaints against seven news offers, including Spiegel, Zeit and Heise, because of the cookie paywalls.
In May, the data protection organization Noyb started a wave of complaints against manipulative and illegal cookie banners on large websites around the Austrian Max Schrems. A few days ago, Noyb announced that it would file 422 formal complaints with ten data protection authorities. Noyb has now filed data protection complaints against a total of seven news websites in Germany and Austria. The complaint is directed against the so-called cookie paywalls.
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The seven news offers are specifically spiegel.de, zeit.de, heise.de, faz.net, derstandard.at, krone.at and t-online.de, like Noyb announces. The organization also provides a reason for the data protection complaints, which – in the case of the German media – were submitted to the respective data protection officers of the federal states. According to this, the point is that readers on more and more websites are faced with the choice of either consenting to the data being passed on to tracking companies or taking out a subscription.
The crux of the matter: According to the Noyb criticism, users cannot freely decide whether they consent to the data being passed on, although this is actually provided for in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Instead, the alternative is to take out a subscription that costs “sometimes ten, twenty or a hundred times as much,” as Alan Dahi, data protection lawyer at Noyb, says. Noyb calculates that the transfer of data from users brings a few cents to the pages, while a subscription costs a few dozen euros.
Noyb wants to take action against DSB decision
“You get the impression that this is not about a fair alternative to consent, but about selling expensive subscriptions,” Dahi continues. According to Noyb, the fact that websites like the seven mentioned are increasingly using this “pay-or-okay” system could be due to a decision by the Austrian data protection authority (DSB) in 2019. She did not see any violation of the GDPR in this. Noyb: “However, this case was brought before the authorities by a layperson and is based on factually incorrect assumptions. Noyb is determined to reverse this decision. “
The Austrian daily Der Standard had promoted the development of the Pur model and sees himself doing it as a “pioneer in all of Europe in matters of data protection”. In any case, Standard Managing Director Alexander Mitteräcker does not see Noyb’s complaint as a reason to “question the product and the decisions of DSB”. For Noyb, by the way, the alternative to the model is that websites consistently advertise in compliance with data protection regulations, instead of “leaving the ‘leftover spaces’ to the advertising industry for a few cents [zu verscherbeln]”.
