The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), due to go into effect in May, will introduce restrictions on how businesses can store and use customers’ personal data. The sensitive personal data held by organisations can include information on health, ethnicity, religious beliefs, political views and more.
Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid set out to quantify just how many of its EU users Facebook has labelled with sensitive data. They found that 73% had been labelled with interests linked to sensitive personal data. This figure is the equivalent of 40% of the total EU population - over 200 million people.
Although GDPR does not forbid the holding of such data, it does require ‘explicit consent’ from consumers.
The full research article (in English) is available here.
Source: TheNextWeb.