London 24 Aug : Google on Wednesday was hit with a new privacy-related complaint in Europe This time for allegedly inserting advertisements in Gmail without the users’ consent.The Privacy Advocates Group noyb has filed the case with France’s watchdog for data protection the CNIL.
The complaint stated the following: in the “Promotions” tab of the mailbox (both in the mobile version of Gmail as well as in the web version) users receive among other things, promotional emails for which they have consented to.
In addition to these emails, users also receive emails advertising of another kind, referred to as Gmail marketing emails.
“These Gmail advertising emails have only two distinctive features that separate these emails from others.First, they contain the word “Ad” in green font on the left beneath the subject line of the email.In addition, they don’t include an expiration date.” in the complaint.
The complaint claimed that Gmail users did not provide consent to being contacted with Google’s advertisements.
“The complainants weren’t asked to give their consent to these promotional emails being sent to them at the time they signed up to Gmail or later,” it said.
Google has yet to respond to the privacy complaints made under the directive on ePrivacy.
When users click on the Gmail advertisement emails the users are not redirected to an external site and are able to view the complete advert in the format of an email.
“Therefore the Gmail advertisements are more similar to traditional email,” said the complaint.
Additionally, Gmail promotional emails are displayed in the tab called “Promotions” in the inbox.
“This is a further source of confusion for users: they typically anticipate receiving emails from advertising to those they have signed up, and thus will be able to believe that the Google advertising emails in question in this case are promotional emails to those who have subscribed,” it alleged.
Gmail allows automatic filtering of unwelcome emails.
Unsolicited direct marketing messages are intended to be directed to an “Spam” box.
But, Gmail advertising emails that are not rescinded — and therefore are not able to be disregarded by Google — are sent to the “Promotions” inbox,” said noyb.
In December 2020 in December 2020, the CNIL handed Google $120 million for dumping tracker cookies without consent.
In January the French watchdog handed Google $170 million due to “dark patterns it observed Google employed in cookies consent flow”.
na/vd
