The Austrian Federal Administrative Court ruled that Der Standard's 'pay or OK' model breaches GDPR by failing to provide granular consent options. Users were required to either pay a fee or consent to data collection for advertising, undermining their freedom to give meaningful consent. The court upheld the earlier decision by Austria's Data Protection Authority that deemed the model unlawful. Critics, including privacy activist Max Schrems, argue that this system leads to artificially high consent rates that do not reflect true user preferences. An appeal to Austria's Supreme Administrative Court is possible, with EU Court of Justice involvement likely.
Max Schrems, Austrian lawyer and privacy activist at NOYB, stated: 'Pay or OK' undermines a core pillar of the GDPR: freely given consent. Instead of a genuine choice of users, we get a North Korean consent rate of 99.9% with this system.
The Austrian Federal Administrative Court confirmed that Der Standard's 'pay or OK' approach violated the EU's privacy rules by not allowing consent for specific types of processing.
Austrian privacy watchdog determined that Der Standard's consent mechanism was unlawful because it permitted only a global consent or rejection, violating the requirement for granular consent.
NOYB noted that the true percentage of users who want to be tracked for online advertisement is only between 1 to 7%, despite the 'pay or OK' model leading to almost universal consent.
Collection
[
|
...
]