After previous charges against Apple, Google and Twitter, another Dutch collective claim against a large American tech company is in the works. Stichting Data Bescherming Nederland accuses web giant Amazon of violating European privacy rules by collecting, processing and transferring data to the United States without the consent of users. This week Amazon received the indictment. If the company does not stop this working method and does not pay compensation to Dutch account holders, it wants to file a lawsuit.
According to the foundation’s own estimate, five million Dutch people would have created an Amazon account. The regulator in Luxembourg (where Amazon’s European headquarters is located) sentenced Amazon to a fine of 746 million euros in 2021 for violating European privacy rules.
Amazon is still collecting and processing unauthorized data from European consumers, the collective claim states. The foundation behind the mass claim accuses Amazon of “surreptitiously slurping data”. Amazon also tracks user behavior outside its own webshop, via so-called third-party cookies. They prove difficult to resist and are even placed if you refuse them, the prosecutors say.
voice recognition
The accusation is partly based on research into ten thousand websites that are often visited by the Dutch. Five hundred of these would place cookies that collect personal data without permission. This happens, for example, on websites such as beleggen.nl, beaumonde.nl, geenstijl.nl, hockey.nl, me-to-we.nl and moviemeter.nl. In other cases, Amazon cookies are placed without valid consent, such as Tripadvisor, Autotrack, Funda, CNN and Vinted. Amazon also collects data through third-party apps like Vinted and Sudoku.
Amazon started as an online store, but also provides many media services, consumer electronics, surveillance cameras and cloud services. In addition, Amazon earns money from online advertisements. It is the largest advertising network in the world after Google and Meta in terms of revenue. Amazon will generate annual revenues of $512 billion by 2022. Nearly 38 billion of that comes from advertising sales, based on users’ personal profiles. According to the complaint, Amazon does not state in its privacy terms how that data is combined.
At the end of May, Amazon settled for USD 30 million (27.5 million euros) with the American regulator FTC following two lawsuits against privacy violations. The first case concerned Ring video doorbells: the camera images could easily be viewed by Amazon employees. In addition, Ring customer account information is floating around the internet.
The other case involved smart speakers with Amazon’s digital assistant, which collected personal data without consent and collected unsolicited audio data to improve speech recognition.
Last week, the FTC started a new case against Amazon; the company allegedly manipulated and misled subscribers of the Prime service as soon as they tried to cancel the service. In the United Kingdom, a mass claim is also pending from consumers demanding compensation because Amazon is allegedly favoring its own products in its online store.
cheat diesels
The Dutch Data Protection Authority also received a copy of the complaint. A spokesman for the Dutch regulator sees the mass claim as a ‘useful addition’ to the existing regulation: ‘It is good for everyone’s privacy that citizens can also collectively take action against violation of their privacy through the courts. Public enforcement by the AP and its international colleagues and private enforcement through legal claims can reinforce each other.”
The litigation funder – a party that advances legal fees – is Longford Capital of Chicago, which has a special fund for these types of claims. The Americans are not actually involved in the lawsuit, but can get up to 20 percent of the proceeds if it comes to a settlement. In similar cases, an assigned damage claim yields between 250 and 2,000 euros per user.
The founder of the Netherlands Data Protection Foundation is Arie van der Steen, an accountant who also litigated on behalf of the Carclaim Foundation against the sjoemeldies of the German car brand VW. In 2021, the court stated that car owners had paid up to 3,000 euros too much and should be compensated. That decision has been challenged by VW.