According to a complaint made on Wednesday to France’s data protection authority by the Austrian advocacy organization noyb.eu, Google has violated a European Union court judgment by sending unsolicited advertising emails straight to Gmail users’ inboxes.
According to noyb.eu, citing a 2021 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Alphabet division should request customers’ prior agreement before sending them any direct marketing emails using Gmail (CJUE).
Although Google’s advertisement emails appear to be regular ones, noyb.eu said in its complaint that they had the word “Ad” in green letters on the left-hand side, beneath the email’s topic. The advocacy group also pointed out that they don’t include a date.
Requests for comment from the French data protection regulator CNIL and Google were not immediately fulfilled.
Vienna-based Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer and privacy activist who won a high-profile case before Europe’s top court in 2020, formed the advocacy organization noyb.eu (None of Your Business).
A record fine of 150 million euros ($149 million) was issued on Google earlier this year by the CNIL, one of Europe’s most outspoken data privacy authorities, for making it impossible for internet users to reject web trackers.
