The EU Privacy Law is believed to be broken by the ad blocker detection
The Irish Digital Privacy Commission (DPC) says YouTube is violating the fundamental right to privacy and the EU’s ePrivacy laws
Europe’s privacy advocates are hoping that government regulations will be enough to stop the crackdown on ad blockers.
The company has taken it’s blocking of ad blockers to a whole other level after it started in a small experiment in June. That means more users with ad blockers enabled are finding themselves unable to watch videos on the platform. Instead of showing the video, YouTube displays a prompt that encourages users to either allow ads on YouTube or subscribe to YouTube Premium.
Hanff, who helped to draft the forthcoming update to the EU’s ePrivacy regulations, says he believes YouTube’s JavaScript violates EU citizens’ privacy.
Hanff refers to his earlier letter in his most recent complaint. The DPC is urged to take action against YouTube because it has been using ad blocker detection tools. Hanff tells The Verge that in addition to violating Article 5.3 of the ePrivacy Directive, he believes it’s also a breach of the fundamental right to privacy under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other conventions. Since submitting his complaint, Hanff says the Irish DPC has already acknowledged it and that he has had a call and “a number of emails” exchanged with them. The DPC didn’t immediately respond after being reached out for comment by The Verge.
Hanff isn’t giving up. “I have been fighting for stronger protection of privacy and data protection rights for almost 2 decades,” he says. I will bring down YouTube if they think that it’s ok for them to deploy spyware to our devices.
