Landmark EU Law Is New Weapon For Data Protection Campaigner Schrems

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Landmark EU law is new weapon for data protection campaigner Schrems

As a young Austrian law student, Max Schrems took on Facebook and won, and seven years ago he was already raising the alarm over the flaw Cambridge Analytica allegedly exploited to obtain the data of millions of users for political purposes.

Vienna, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th May, 2018 ) :As a young Austrian law student, Max Schrems took on Facebook and won, and seven years ago he was already raising the alarm over the flaw Cambridge Analytica allegedly exploited to obtain the data of millions of users for political purposes.

So, as a new EU law -- billed as the biggest shake-up of data privacy regulations since the birth of the web -- comes into force Friday, Schrems might be forgiven for thinking his work is done. Far from it.

In fact, he has chosen the day to launch four court cases under the new legislation against some of the tech world's biggest Names. "One is in France against Google on Android, the other one is on Instagram in Belgium, the third one is in Hamburg against WhatsApp and the fourth one is in Austria against Facebook," Schrems told AFP, adding that the cases were being brought by his new NGO None of Your business.

The problem with all these sites, he said, is with the pop ups that have been appearing on them in recent weeks, asking users to agree to new terms of use. He says this amounts to a system of "forced consent" from users.

"All of them basically have a situation where you have to consent to the privacy policy otherwise you're not allowed to use their service. "It's clear in the law -- there are decisions by European data protection authorities and guidelines that this (practice) is prohibited," he said.

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) aims to make it simpler for people to control how companies use their personal information.