The Danish Data Protection Authority criticizes Meta Pixel

Perhaps you have read within the last week that the Danish Data Protection Authority has issued a serious criticism of the company Boligportal’s use of Facebook Business Tools, including Meta Pixel, for not being able to demonstrate that their processing of information about people who visit their website, has taken place in accordance with the GDPR.

The Authority has also issued an order to Boligportal to bring the processing in line with the rules.

However, it is currently not possible to make adjustments to Meta Pixel, and the only way to comply with the rules at this time is therefore to remove Meta Pixel completely from your website.

How to deal with it

It is important to mention that we are not legal advisors. It is therefore up to you to decide for yourself how you want to deal with the new announcement from the Data Protection Authority.

Although the Danish Data Protection Authority has issued an order, no fines have yet been issued for the use of Meta Pixel. On the contrary, it can be expensive not to use Meta Pixel if you advertise on the platform, as you lose all your data.

The vast majority of Meta advertisers in Denmark therefore also use Meta Pixel, and it is our assumption that the majority of Danish companies will not act on the Danish Data Protection Authority’s announcement. It will simply mean an excessively large financial loss for many of the companies.

On the other hand, we suspect that the great media pressure that continues to follow the announcement will help to pressure Meta to come up with a solution as soon as possible. At the same time, the long-awaited Privacy Shield agreement between the EU and the US can also help to solve the problem.

In the meantime there are two small steps you can take to mitigate any possible injunction:

Update the terms of use on your website
Review your terms of use and make sure that you explicitly state here how your company uses Meta Pixel.
Contact Meta Support
If you can show the Danish Data Protection Authority that you have made an active effort to investigate your use of Facebook Business Tools, this may be a mitigating circumstance. You can show this by contacting Meta Support yourself and asking them questions about their views on the matter.

If you have any further questions about the case or how it affects you, you are of course always welcome to contact Katharina Rendtslev på katharina@iternumdigital.com or +45 53 55 08 44.

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