Facebook, Google, Amazon and other tech giants could be non-compliant with GDPR, claims EU consumer group

AI GDPR compliance tool could be used to web crawl for non-compliant privacy policies

The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) has claimed that Amazon, Facebook and Google are among 14 of the world's biggest online and technology companies could be non-compliant with GDPR.

It claims to have built its own tool, called Claudette, that uses artificial intelligence to interpret the documents and conduct an automated analysis of the companies privacy policies. Only Amazon, Facebook and Google have been named of the 14 that the BEUC claims are non-compliant.

Other organisations privacy policies it examined, though, included Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Uber, WhatsApp, AirBnB, Netflix, Steam, Booking.com, Skyscanner and Epic Games, maker of the popular Fortnite game.

These companies were all targeted as major organisations that not only collect a lot of information on their users, but which should also be setting an example, the BEUC said.

"In total, all the policies amounted to 3,659 sentences (80,398 words). Of these, 401 sentences (11 per cent) were marked as containing unclear language, and 1,240 (33.9 per cent) contained ‘potentially problematic' clauses or clauses providing ‘insufficient' information," claimed the organisation in a statement.

"Our study suggests that the current privacy policies of online platforms and services still have a significant margin for improvement," concludes the report.

It continues: "None of the 14 analysed privacy policies gets close to meeting the standards put forward by the GDPR. Unsatisfactory treatment of the information requirements; large amounts of sentences employing vague language; and an alarming number of ‘problematic' clauses cannot be deemed satisfactory."

However, a next step, claims the organisation in its report, is to build the tool into a web crawler that can automatically analyse the privacy policies of any organisation.

"One could imagine a situation in which a web-crawler automatically traverses the web in search for privacy policies, scans them and communicates the results. On one hand, such a crawler could send information to the company… On the other, [it could] inform the civil society, the supervisory authorities, the press about its findings," suggested the report.

It suggests, too, that "civil society" could be equipped with the tool in order to conduct their own analyses of organisations' privacy policies and GDPR compliance. "When this is the case, they will leave no stone untouched, no policy unread, no infringement unnoticed," warns the BEUC.

The organisation's report also suggested that more legal force should be placed on privacy policies and argued that, as a first step, EU authorities should issue "clear guidelines on the form and contents" of organisations' privacy policies.