Irish Commission Opens Investigation Into Twitter's Data Collection

This year has been marked by increased government scrutiny into the practices of social networks and other major tech firms. That trend continued Thursday with a data privacy watchdog in Ireland opening an investigation into Twitter’s (TWTR) data collection practices, Fortune reported.

The Irish Data Protection Commission has opened a “formal statutory inquiry” into how much data Twitter collects when a user clicks on a shortened “t.co” link. Twitter automatically changes links posted in tweets to these shortened links, given the site’s strict character limit at the core of its design.

University College London researcher Michael Veale asked Twitter to hand over the data Twitter has collected about him so he could study the “t.co” links. Twitter refused, citing the amount of effort it would take, even though Veale should theoretically have a right to that data under Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation law. Veale suspected Twitter was collecting data on users after they clicked on those links.

Veale complained to the Irish DPC since Twitter’s European headquarters are in Dublin. The agency will look at if Twitter has “discharged its obligations” under the GDPR. The new regulation, which started enforcement in May, requires tech companies to be significantly more transparent about how they use customer data and gives customers more data rights.

Firms such as Facebook, Twitter and Airbnb have had to update their terms of service to comply with GDPR. For example, Airbnb is now required to factor hidden fees into rental prices for transparency’s sake. The European Union recently expressed displeasure with Facebook and Twitter for not adequately updating their terms for GDPR. Both companies were threatened with sanctions if they did not fully comply by the end of the year.

Twitter has not been under the spotlight nearly as much as Facebook in 2018, given the latter’s struggles with the Cambridge Analytica issue and a recent data breach. That said, the company has not been without problems. It was accused of “shadow-banning” right-wing accounts by President Donald Trump earlier this year. A purge of spam accounts coincided with a drop in monthly active users, which sent the firm’s stock price into a nosedive.