⚖️ Privacy on Trial: Court Rulings, GDPR Violations & the Future of Your Data Security

According to Politico, the Board, the European Data Protection Board will decide on the Irish DPA's draft decision to shut down Meta Ireland's data transfers by April 14. This sets the deadline for the DPA's final decision to mid-May. Depending on the EDPB's decision. Depending on the timing of the European Commission's adequacy decision for the US, Europe may face a Facebook and Instagram blackout..

On March 15 Facebook lost a class action before the Amsterdam District Court. The ruling found that Facebook Ireland lacked a legal basis for serving personalized advertisement, processed sensitive data unlawfully, and violated consumer law. Damages will be awarded in a separate ruling and might be substantial, as the class action involves about 190.000 users.

The Finnish DPA found Google Analytics to be incompatible with the GDPR's data transfer rules in a recent decision. The Norwegian DPA reached the same preliminary conclusion in a pending case.
At the same time, the Czech government is removing Google Analytics from many of its websites over privacy concerns.

In late February the EDPB issued its Opinion on the adequacy decision draft from the European Commission. The EDPB considers the new framework an improvement over the Privacy Shield, but also highlights some issues, including the criteria for bulk collection of data, and certain aspects of the redress mechanism.

On February 23 the European Commission banned TikTok from corporate devices over security concerns. A few days later, Canada banned TikTok from government devices. TikTok CEO Shou Chew will be heard by the US Congress on March 23. Given the ongoing political discussion over Tiktok in the US, the atmosphere will likely be tense.

Whatsapp and Signal both announced that they might stop providing their services in the UK if the controversial Online Safety Bill were to pass. In its current draft, the pending bill requires the providers of messaging service to scan messages for illegal and harmful content. This in turn requires implementing backdoors into end-to-end encrypted systems.

The European Data Protection Supervisor is hoping to dismiss Microsoft Office in favor of privacy-friendly alternatives. In February the institution started experimenting with the use of Nextcloud and Collabora Online for its day-to-day work.

Owky is a free and open source Two Factor Authentication (2FA) application, which generates Time-based One-Time Passwords (TOTP).

Take back control of your online privacy with Ghostery. The privacy suite that gives you the power to block ads, stop trackers, and much more.

What is digital privacy? And how can you improve your digital privacy? This article tells you all you need to know about digital privacy.

Server-side implementation of Google Analytics is frequently mentioned as the solution to the issue of data transfers. This article explains everything you need to know.

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