DOES A NON-NEGOTIABLE USER AGREEMENT ALLOW COMPANIES TO USE CONSUMER DATA FOR ANY PURPOSE THEY WISH AND NEGATE GDPR?

DOES A NON-NEGOTIABLE USER AGREEMENT ALLOW COMPANIES TO USE CONSUMER DATA FOR ANY PURPOSE THEY WISH AND NEGATE GDPR?

An interesting argument is taking place between European data protection regulators. It centres on the sweeping agreements companies including Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and of course Google use. In essence these platforms, especially Google, are near-global monopolies and users are in no position to negotiate the contracts they agree to, or realistically to opt out of their (apparently free) services.

So the providers have exploited this situation to put terms into their user agreements that pretty well entitle them to do anything with your personal data that they choose to. Hence when you search on Google for information about something, to your amazement Facebook/Instagram instantaneously start sending you a vast stream of adverts for related products as if they could read your mind. In my case I was looking for instructions for my central heating controller on Google last night, and today Instagram is magically flooding me with adverts relating to central heating.

So effectively these non-negotiable user agreements eliminate all your rights to personal privacy, despite the requirements of GDPR. Initially the Europeans regulators ruled that since these user agreements were entered into freely, they could effectively allow the mega corporations to bi-pass GDPR. But national regulators disagreed, and have ruled that these are abusive unreasonable clauses and have fined Meta hundreds of millions of Euros.

This raises some interesting related issues. Other companies with near monopolies, such as our largest gas, internet and telecoms providers have quite extraordinary terms in their long non-negotiable standard user agreements, allowing them to use your data very widely, or even extract punitive charges on even the most minor excuse. I won’t list the many examples I have come across over the last year since I moved house, but merely say that it is obvious that most owners of what would previously have been called utilities, are now providing staggeringly appalling levels of customer service – in some cases up to 7 hour waits on the phone with no online or email alternatives; and will find the most extraordinary excuses to direct debit eye-watering sums straight out of your bank account with almost no explanation or excuse other than that small-print on page 20 of their standard user agreement allows them to.

So perhaps we are about to see a new era of protection from totally one-sided non-negotiable agreements by near monopoly service providers. I certainly hope so.

#GDPR #monopolies #utilities #Google #Meta #Facebook #Instagram #useragreements #dataprotection #dataprotectionlaw #europeanregulation #competitioncommission #abuseofdominantposition