Europeans have their data shared 376 times a day in advertising sales, according to a report.
A report, by The Irish Council for Civil Liberties found that data by every single internet user is passed along hundreds of times a day for ad slots with people based in Europe getting their data shared 376 times a day while people in the United States, totally 107 trillion times a year across the world.
The group - who are embroiled in legal suit with the digital ad industry and the Data Protection Commission - oppose this practice and believe nobody has consented to this specific action.
The data is shared between parties - who act for people wishing to place ads to the relevant consumer - as pages of individual users load and it consists of the device being used, information regarding the devices location and some of the users’ browsing history. This is then used to place the relevant ads to the best matched people and with their technology, it is done in a fraction of a second.
Information that could be used to identify an individual is not used, however the ICCL believe the practice is still a violation of privacy, labelling it “the biggest data breach ever recorded”.
Dr Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at the group said: "Every day the RTB [Real Time Bidding] industry tracks what you are looking at, no matter how private or sensitive, and it records where you go. This is the biggest data breach ever recorded. And it is repeated every day”
The report - which does not include information from both Meta and Google - was based on a Google feed monitored over a 30 day period.
