Brave: Google bypasses GDPR and shares data about users with advertisers

Browser maker Brave claims that competitor Google shares private data of users with advertisers and thus circumvents the European privacy rules of the AVG. Brave has submitted documentation to an Irish government agency investigating Google.

Brave claims that Google circumvents the AVG rules by using so-called Push pages, of which the browser maker has put an example online. In addition, a ‘gid’ would be sent, an identifier of Google users without mentioning the account. In combination with other cookies, when bidding on advertisements in real time, advertisers can match users with their own database. As a result, sharing the data is not anonymous and Google is breaking the rules, Brave says.

Sharing of the Push pages occurs when bidding for ads on a total of more than eight million websites with DoubleClick ads. Google also discusses the technology used on its own page, confirming the use of a code to identify a user.

Brave CEO Johnny Ryan has submitted documentation and logs to the Irish Data Protection Agency, which is investigating whether Google is breaking the law with data collection for its ads. Google said in a response to the Financial Times that it has not seen the documentation, but that it will never show personalized ads without users’ consent.