Mass claim against Twitter for selling the data of 11 million Dutch users
The Netherlands Data Protection Foundation is preparing a mass claim against Twitter on behalf of 11 million Netherlands residents. According to the foundation, Twitter collected and sold their privacy-sensitive data without permission through the advertising company MoPub, Trouw reports.
MoPub gathered people’s data on about 30,000 popular apps, including Buienradar, Flitsmeister, Duolingo, Wordfued, Vinted, and Grindr, from 2013 to 2021. Twitter sold the advertising company at the start of this year. The foundation is filing a mass claim on behalf of 10 million adults and 1 million minors in the Netherlands - an estimate of how many Netherlands residents had these apps on their phones.
“Each app on the over 30,000 on our list had a small piece of code from MoPub,” Anouk Ruhaak, chairman of the Netherlands Data Protection Foundation, said to Trouw. “The code stores when you start the app, where you are, and how long you use the app. You may also be using other apps. If you combine all the data, you get a picture of a person.”
MoPub sold the data, and companies used it for targeted advertisements, Ruhaak said. “You think I get an advertisement, who cares. But what you don’t realize is that you get different ads than others, and that can influence your behavior.” For example, a 15-year-old with an eating disorder uses a carb-counting app and gets advertisements for dieting programs. “That can be very harmful.”
Another example is a woman who wants to have a child and keeps track of her menstrual cycle. “Companies then know: this woman wants to have children. So there’s a good chance she will get ads with baby socks. What she doesn’t see is that some companies have vacancies but don’t show them to her. Because they don’t want to hire someone who’ll go on maternity leave soon. This not only happens to her but also to other women who want to have children. That’s discrimination,” Ruhaak said.”
Ruhaak doesn’t know whether the companies behind the 30,000 apps knew that MoPub used them to collect data. It is also not clear whether the advertisers realize they are using illegally obtained data.
On Tuesday, the Netherlands Data Protection Foundation launched an awareness campaign to inform the affected Netherlands residents that it is filing a mass claim on their behalf. The foundation’s goal is compensation for all injured parties. “We have not yet determined an amount for the claim,” Ruhaak said to the newspaper. “But in the past, courts have paid out between 250 and 2,500 euros per person for similar lawsuits.”
Anyone who wishes to claim compensation can register on this website. The foundation will check whether you had a smartphone between 2013 and 2021 and had any of the 30,000 apps installed. “Even if you no longer know which apps you downloaded, that’s no problem. Both Apple and Android keep track of which apps you had on your phone in the past.”
