German court bans LinkedIn from ignoring "Do Not Track" signals
German court bans LinkedIn from ignoring "Do Not Track" signals
The Berlin Regional Court found LinkedIn's ignoring of "Do Not Track" signals and publishing of profiles without permission to be illegal. The ruling supported consumer control over personal data.
The court found that LinkedIn cannot ignore "Do Not Track" signals sent by users' browsers. These signals allow internet users to opt-out of having their online activities tracked. Despite receiving these signals, LinkedIn still announced on its website that it engages in tracking for analysis and marketing purposes. The court said this communication is misleading, as LinkedIn is legally required to respect the Do Not Track requests.
Additionally, the court banned LinkedIn from automatically making users' profiles publicly visible when they first create an account. This "Profile Visibility" default setting published users' information without their consent, violating data protection regulations. Users must expressly agree before their profiles can be visible to non-members.
DNT has already been deprecated in browsers for a while.
What do you mean? The setting is still present in the latest Firefox and Chrome.
I don't know whether DNT is deprecated or not, but "deprecated" doesn't mean "not present". It means that it's no longer something that one should use, but remains present. A deprecated thing might be removed in the future, but while being deprecated, it remains present.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deprecation
In several fields, especially computing, deprecation is the discouragement of use of some terminology, feature, design, or practice, typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered efficient or safe, without completely removing it or prohibiting its use. Typically, deprecated materials are not completely removed to ensure legacy compatibility or back up practice in case new methods are not functional in an odd scenario.
It can also imply that a feature, design, or practice will be removed or discontinued entirely in the future.[1]
"Germany bans this already illegal thing"... So they double banned it?
If you tell LinkedIn they do something illegal, they'll just ignore you. If you ask a court to tell them, they'll at least have to make a calculation what is cheaper: complying with a court order (less profit from using your data) or ignoring it (more legal fees). We will soon know.
This is civil law, not criminal. It needs to be brought to court, otherwise if everybody just quietly ignores it it can go on forever unchallenged. Which is exactly what has happened so far: technically, ignoring "do not track" is in breach of GDPR but it's pretty hard to prove that a company does it. What's different about this case is that LinkedIn publicly declared they ignore it, which made it an open and shut case. And now that they got the ball rolling it's going to be easier to go after other companies.