Last week I received an email from Meta Plattforms Inc about their new ToS and Privacy Policy addressed to my first Name.
But I don’t have any accounts on any services from Meta Platforms (I deleted them a few years ago). Therefore I contacted the DPO and requested a copy of my personal data and asked them to delete it according to GDPR.
They told me that there is no account associated to my email, I should provide my account details to the account in question, which I don’t have. They are unable to help me with the data I provided and I should contact the irish or my local data protection authority and bring my claims before court.
So they obviously have at least my first name and my email address and refuse to comply with GDPR.
Has anyone had any simmilar experiences or any recommendations on my further actions?
I don’t have the time and money to sue Meta, but I will contact my local data protection authority.
You don’t have to sue them. Suing a multinational company will bankrupt you. Let the data protection authority handle this.
The DPC is almost certainly going to ignore complaints like this. You can choose between suing meta or suing the DPC.
It’s not the US here, suing is not viable nor easy in the EU. That’s why we created that system in the first place. And it kinda works. It may be slow but they are not gonna ignore complaints at random
Have you ever seen the statistics? The DPAs are massively underfunded and the Irish DPC in particular is notorious for ignoring complaints, to the point where the EU is considering launching infringement procedures against Ireland for not properly enforcing the GDPR. If you think they will take action on a complaint like this, you will get disappointed.
On the other hand, petitioning the courts to intervene is probably easier than you think. In some member states you don’t even need a lawyer, so all it takes is a bit of time and some court fees. I’m not saying it’s the preferred option, but realistically it is the shortest path to a result.