Google has breached a European Union court ruling by sending unsolicited advertising emails directly to the inbox of Gmail users, Austrian advocacy group Noyb (None Of Your Business) 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 said, citing a 2021 decision by the European Court of Justice.
While Google’s advert 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 said in its complaint. Also, they do not include a date, the advocacy group added.
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In a post on its website, the advocacy group said the complaint is based on the ePrivacy Directive and not the GDPR. That means that “the French authority can directly decide and fine Google” without the need to co-operate with other European data authorities.
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“It is quite simple. Spam is a commercial email sent without consent. And it is illegal. Spam does not become legal just because it is generated by the email provider,” said Romain Robert, a lawyer at the advocacy group.
CNIL, the French regulator, has already fined Google on two occasions. Last December it hit the search engine giant with a €150 million penalty for presenting users with an option to immediately accept cookies without providing “an equivalent solution [button or other] enabling the internet user to easily refuse the deposit of these cookies”.
It also fined Google €50 million in June 2020 based on a Noyb complaint over the opacity of the company’s privacy policy and its lack of legal basis for personalised adverts.
Google and CNIL did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
Vienna-based Noyb is an advocacy group founded by Austrian lawyer and privacy activist Max Schrems who won a high-profile case with Europe’s top court in 2020. — Reuters
