Tech Companies Breaching Customers’ Data Revealed

Google and other big internet companies are engaging in serious incidents of data breaches bypassing users’ data to third parties without their consent. This is according to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL).

The ICCL has revealed that internet giants are passing users’ data billions of times per day via real-time bidding (RTB) system. This data facilitates tracking and ad targeting. Real-time bidding (RTB) is the process in which digital advertising inventory is bought and sold. This process occurs in less than a second.

Operating behind the scenes, RTB is able to track what you are looking at and your real-time location. On average, a person in the United States has their online activity and location exposed 747 times every day by the RTB industry.

“RTB is the biggest data breach ever recorded. It tracks and shares what people view online and their real-world location 294 billion times in the US and 197 billion times in Europe every day,” the report by ICCL said.

The private data is then passed to firms across the globe, including Russia and China, and there is no way of controlling how the data is used. According to the ICCL, it is a lucrative industry “The RTB industry generated over $117 billion in the US and Europe in 2021,” ICCL claims.

The watchdog further says that data from US users (including location and behaviour) is shared 107 trillion times a year, while users in Europe have their data passed 71 trillion times a year.

“Google is the biggest RTB company. It tracks and shares what people in the US and Europe do online and where they are on a vast scale. “Most advertising on websites and apps is placed using RTB. Advertisers spend $100 billion per year on RTB in the US and Europe,”

None of the big tech companies has reacted to the report by the Irish watchdog. The report comes at a time when global regulators are increasingly tightening their focus on how big tech companies are using personal data.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties(ICCL) is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting civil liberties and human rights.