Pinterest tracks users without consent, alleges complaint

Pinterest has received a complaint from privacy watchdog noyb (None of your business) over the unsolicited tracking of its users.

Pinterest allows you to pin images to virtual pinboards; useful for interior design, recipe ideas, party inspiration, and much more. It started as a virtual replacement for paper catalogs to share recipes, but has since grown into a visual search and e-commerce platform.

With the growth came the advertisers, and what their goals with the platform were. And as we are all undoubtedly aware, targeted and especially personalized advertising is much more effective than regular advertising.

So, like many other social media platforms before it, Pinterest claimed to have a legitimate interest in using personal data without asking for consent.

The “legitimate interest” argument comes from one of the six lawful bases granted in the European Union’s (EU’s) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which states that processing of personal data is allowed if it is:

“…necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject.”

Social media platforms have a habit of claiming to need that ability for economic reasons, to improve their service, or to safeguard security of both users and the platform. But in every case I know of, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled against platforms using personal data without consent.

Pinterest users are not made aware of the fact that they can turn off “ads personalisation” under the “privacy and data” settings, according to the complaint. This setting is turned on by default, allowing Pinterest to use information from visited websites and from other third parties to show users personalized ads.

When a complainant filed an access request to find out what data Pinterest had about her, she received a copy of her data on the same day, but quickly realized that it didn’t include any information about the recipients of her data.

Two additional requests made her none the wiser about the categories of data that were shared with third parties, which means that Pinterest failed to adequately respond to the access request under Article 15(1)© of the GDPR.

Based on this, noyb has filed a complaint with the French data protection authority (CNIL). The grounds of that complaint are that Pinterest violated Article 6(1) GDPR by processing the complainant’s personal data for personalized advertising on the basis of legitimate interest, and violated Article 15(1)© GDPR by failing to provide access to the categories of data shared with third parties.

To turn off personalized ads on Pinterest:

• Log in to your Pinterest account
• Click the chevron-down icon at the top-right corner to open your menu
• Click Settings
• Select Privacy and data
• Adjust your personalization settings
• Click Save.

Pinterest reminds users that this setting does not apply to information about purchases you initiate on Pinterest. More information about this setting is available in Pinterest’s Help Center.

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