Foundation is appealing a class action lawsuit against Oracle and Salesforce – IT Pro – News

Privacy Collective will appeal after a court in Amsterdam declared the class action against Salesforce and Oracle inadmissible at the end of December. According to the foundation, the companies are guilty of privacy violations.

This is written by The Privacy Collective in news† The Foundation Never Give Up Amsterdam court ruling It will resume. The foundation is seeking €500 compensation for each victim whose data was illegally collected and used by Oracle and Salesforce via cookies, according to The Privacy Collective.

privacy group Served in August 2020 It has sued Oracle and Salesforce for collecting data on a large scale from visitors to their sites by using specially designed cookies and combining them with other data to build millions of individual profiles, according to the group. These are used, among other things, for personal ads and, according to the foundation, “are illegally shared with countless commercial parties, including advertising parties.” This would be a violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Oracle and Salesforce contradict this.

Vimek Hendrix, now president of The Privacy Collective, says: “Without a legal basis, Oracle and Salesforce collect and process the data of millions of Dutch internet users. […] With this appeal, we want to ensure that these millions of people can be heard in court.”

The court in Amsterdam, in December, declared the class action inadmissible. The court stated that there was a “under-representation” due to the way in which support for the collective claim had been mobilized. Dutch netizens can support the action by clicking on the like button. For example, the group collected 75,000 “likes” for the claim, but the court stated, among other things, that on this basis alone it could not be established that the Foundation stood in favor of “a sufficiently large part of the group of affected parties.” Therefore, the judge decided Not hearing the case.

Interestingly, when making the claim, The Privacy Collective stated that Dutch internet users are not required to register or provide any information to support the case. After a settlement or judgment is reached that the claim is justified, they can apply for a refund. However, a judge in Amsterdam ruled that it could not be established that the 75,000 Internet users who supported the measure were actually deceived. Since no data was collected from supporters, The Privacy Collective was unable to contact them. This is required by law. The court did not provide any opportunity to correct this defect.

From the beginning of 2020, there is an option for private parties to initiate a so-called class action in the event of a GDPR violation. Privacy Group was the first party to use this legal remedy.