Ad against website warning wave – salzburg.ORF.at
Media&IT
A Salzburg lawyer submitted a statement of facts to the public prosecutor’s office on Sunday against a colleague from Lower Austria. Its warning wave against thousands of website operators is illegal. There is a suspicion of fraud or extortion, according to the Salzburg lawyer.
On behalf of a client, the Lower Austrian lawyer sent around 50,000 warning letters to companies or associations because they allegedly violated data protection on their websites. A reminder fee of 190 euros was demanded. Justification for the claims: The website uses fonts from Google Fonts, which are located on US servers. This means that the IP address of visitors to the website is forwarded to Google in the USA with each call-up. According to Darin, the client of the Lower Austrian lawyer saw a loss of control over her data, which caused emotional damage.
According to initial estimates, there should also be several thousand Internet site operators in Salzburg who have been warned, says Salzburg data protection lawyer Peter Harlander: “We think the number is realistic. Our website alone had 25,000 unique visitors in the last few days – and we are actually not the only data protection law firm in Austria. It will probably be the same for the others.”
Salzburg ad against wave of warnings on websites
Automated query: “No data protection law violated”
But to really represent a data breach, a single person would have to visit the tens of thousands of warning websites. And that probably wasn’t the case, says Harlander: “Theoretically, of course, it would be possible for someone to look at thousands and thousands of websites. In this specific case, however, there is considerable evidence that software was sent on its way and that no human data protection law was violated.”
Because only initially were some of the warned websites actually visited manually. In the further course of the warning wave, the procedure was switched to a fully automated one, argues the Salzburg lawyer – the addresses were automatically read from the respective imprint and inserted into the warning letters.
Lawyer: Suspected of fraud or extortion
Conversely, Harlander is now accusing his colleagues and his client of breaking the law. The Salzburg lawyer sees the suspicion of serious commercial fraud or serious commercial extortion: “The presentation of the facts contains our entire argumentation and the evidence. Of course, the public prosecutor’s office or, in the second step, the court has the last word. Until that has been decided, the presumption of innocence naturally applies.”
In any case, the public prosecutor’s office in Korneuburg am Zug must now examine how it deals with the allegations against the Lower Austrian lawyer.