EU High Court: Online Marketplaces Must Confirm Consent Before Publishing Sensitive Data in Ads
Before publishing an ad on their platforms, online marketplace owners are responsible for ensuring that an advertiser is the actual person whose sensitive information appears in an ad or that the advertiser has the express consent of that person, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said Tuesday (Case C-492/23, Russmedia Digital and Inform Media Press).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Privacy Daily provides accurate coverage of newsworthy developments in data protection legislation, regulation, litigation, and enforcement for privacy professionals responsible for ensuring effective organizational data privacy compliance.
Under GDPR requirements, if the sensitive data isn't that of the advertiser, the platform owner must refuse to publish the ad unless the advertiser can verify that it has the explicit consent of the person whose data it is or that publication is covered by some other provision of the GDPR, the court ruled.
The operator must also take measures to prevent such advertisements published on its platform from being copied and unlawfully published on other websites, the ECJ said. An operator can't avoid those obligations by relying on the EU e-commerce directive's provisions exempting information society services from liability as intermediaries, it added.
The case arose in 2018 when an unidentified person published an ad on Russmedia Digital, a Romanian online marketplace, stating that a woman was offering sexual services, the court said. The ad contained photographs of the woman, used without her consent, along with her phone number.
The woman sued in Romania for violations of rules for the processing of personal data, among other things. A lower court upheld her claim, but the Specialised Court of Cluj ruled for Russmedia on the ground that it was a mere hosting service and not responsible for content published by its users. The Court of Appeal of Cluj asked the ECJ for guidance on the interpretation of EU law.