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German Antitrust ordered Facebook to stop “combining” data of German users without voluntary consent

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
On February 7, 2019, the Bundeskartellamt, the German antitrust authority, prohibited Facebook from combining data concerning German Facebook users gathered also from third party websites when the user didn’t give voluntary consent to this practice. The decision concerns all private users of Facebook based in Germany. According to the Bundeskartellamt’s decision, until now, individuals have only been able to use Facebook services if they agreed to the terms of service, including Read more [...]

Update on GDPR after 8 months of its application

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
  On January 25, 2015, the European Commission released a statement with an update about the effects of the adoption of Regulation 2016/679/EU (GDPR) Since its entry into force on May 25, 2018, “citizens have become more conscious of the importance of data protection and of their rights. And they are now exercising these rights, as national Data Protection Authorities see in their daily work. They have by now received more than 95,000 complaints from citizens.” So far, 23 member Read more [...]

Thailand approved a Personal Data Protection Act

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
  On February 28, 2019, Thailand’s National Legislative Assembly passed the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA). According to this source, the PDPA will be signed and endorsed by the monarch, and will then be published in the Government Gazette before to enter into force later this year. This article explains that the legislative text includes the following provisions: data subjects have rights similar to the ones provided for by the GDPR, including the right to obtain a Read more [...]

Italian law defines blockchain and smart contracts

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
On February 12, 2019, Law no. 12/2019, converting into law the so called Decreto Semplificazioni (“Simplification Decree”), Legislative Decree No. 135/2018 was published on the Italian Official Gazette no. 36/2019. Among other provisions, the Simplification Decree defines the concept of "technologies based on distributed ledgers (blockchain)" and "smart contracts". "Technologies based on distributed ledgers" are technologies and IT protocols using a shared, distributed, replicable Read more [...]

Advocate General warns against embedding the Facebook “Like” button on websites

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
On December 19, 2018, Advocate General Bobek, published his opinion in case C-40/17, deeming that anyone who enters the Facebook “Like” button on his website can be considered a joint controller. In this case, a German fashion online retailer embedded a Facebook’s ‘Like’ button in its website. As a result, when users landed on the retailer’s website, information about that user’s IP address and browser string was transferred to Facebook. The transfer occurred automatically when Read more [...]