Pinterest hit with privacy complaint for unlawfully tracking users

Social media platform Pinterest has been hit with a privacy complaint in France for processing people's data without their consent, lodged today by advocacy group NOYB.

Pinterest enables tracking by default for advertising purposes - which users should be offered an opt-out to prevent under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - NOYB said in its complaint, filed with the French data protection authority CNIL.

The company – which has some 130 million users in the EU – would be able to show users personalised ads by reference to data from visited websites and from other third parties, NOYB alleges.

“Pinterest is secretly tracking European users without asking for their consent. This allows the social media platform to unlawfully profit from people’s personal data without them ever finding out,” Kleanthi Sardeli, a data protection lawyer at NOYB, said in a statement.

In 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that personalised advertising cannot be justified on the basis of 'legitimate interest' under the GDPR.

NOYB has asked Pinterest to erase the data processed for personalised ads and to inform recipients of the erasure. It also suggests that CNIL imposes a penalty to prevent similar violations in future.

Pinterest, which allows people to create virtual mood boards and to collect images for inspiration, has also been designated by the European Commission as a very large online platform under the EU’s platform rules, because it has more than 45 million average users in the EU. 

In January the Commission sought additional information from Pinterest, along 16 other platforms, to understand more about what measures they took for provide researchers with data access.

Pinterest has been contacted for a comment.