UK regulator steps up warning to ad tech industry about GDPR violations in programmatic advertising

This week, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) gathered with industry players in London in a closed-door meeting to discuss their latest findings since the kick-off of their investigation into the real-time bidding industry in June.

This week, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) gathered with industry players in London in a closed-door meeting to discuss their latest findings since the kick-off of their investigation into the real-time bidding industry in June.

The ICO executive director of innovation, Simon McDougall, confirmed that so far they have confirmed that there has been direct processing of sensitive data without explicit consent. Digiday reports that the ICO also found, among other things: 

• An over-reliance on contracts as a guarantee of security, with inconsistent terms

• Insufficiently transparent privacy policies, including lacking detail about how users could withdraw consent

• Poor standards of assessing legitimate interest for collection and retention of data

A public update from the ICO is expected on December 20, with enforcement to follow in early 2020. 

Read more over at Digiday and Campaign Live.