Panoptykon Foundation files complaint against Google and other “ad tech” companies with the with the Polish Data Protection Authority

Panoptykon Foundation, the Warsaw based digital rights organization, has joined in the complaints filed in the UK and Ireland in September by Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group, Michael Veale of University College London, and Dr Johnny Ryan of Brave, by filing a new complaint in Poland.  Together, the complainants in Ireland, Poland, and the UK, have also filed new evidence today with the national data protection authorities of Ireland, Poland, and the United Kingdom, that reveals how ad auction companies, including Google, unlawfully profile Internet users’ religious beliefs, ethnicities, diseases, disabilities, and sexual orientation.

“Ad auction systems are obscure by design”, said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, President of Panoptykon Foundation. “Lack of transparency makes it impossible for users to exercise their rights under GDPR. There is no way to verify, correct or delete marketing categories that have been assigned to us, even though we are talking about our personal data. IAB and Google have to redesign their systems to fix this failure”.