Google faces a huge fine for allegedly violating privacy rules

Last year, the European Union adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) designed to boost privacy rights in the union. Under this regulation, companies in the EU cannot use a consumer's personal data without informed, explicit consent. A company found to have violated the GDPR can be socked with a fine as large as 4% of the company's prior year global revenue.

With Google's European headquarters based in Ireland, Reuters says that the company is now being investigated for GDPR violations by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC). The genesis of the complaint is interesting. The developers of an app called Brave Browser were among those claiming that Google is not playing by GDPR rules when it collects personal data for advertisers. When someone using the Browser visits a website, the app's developers state that personal information belonging to the user is sent out to hundreds of companies without the user's knowledge. These companies use this data in order to place bids to place targeted ads