Personalized advertising and selection of legal grounds for the processing of personal data by digital platforms

Abstract

The study addresses the problematics of identifying pertinent legal justifications for the processing of users’ personal data by very large digital platforms, as these issues were reflected in the CJEU decision of July 4, 2023, in case C-252/21, Meta Platforms Inc. The decision of the CJEU will have massive reverberations on the manner under which national courts and supervisory authorities with competencies in the matter of controlling the processing of personal information will apply the provisions of art. 9, 1^st para. GDPR, for cookie technologies that select browsing data on the websites of commercial partners of an oversized digital platform and that involve the storage of “special categories of personal data”, prohibiting the processing operations which concern these categories. On the second level, the CJEU decision marks the impossibility, for digital platforms, of selecting legal grounds such as the performance of the contract or the legitimate interest of the data operator, when collecting personal data and, especially, behavioral data of users, in contexts that are irreconcilable with the genuine necessity of performing contractual obligations.