Nutzerprofilbildung durch Webtracking

The usage potential of Big Data has enriched consumers’ lives with a wealth of expanded and novel services; these very services, however, also pose fundamental challenges to data protection law. Unfortunately, the new basic data protection regulation is a product of discourse on data protection law reform that began prior to the rise of Big Data. Consequently, it hardly copes with the new challenges posed by rapid technological development. The present work addresses this deficiency by examining user profiling via web tracking and the resulting implications for data protection law. It sheds light on the complex technical, economic and legal issues involved in user profiling by means of web tracking. Against this background, it presents an innovative regulatory proposal that accounts for both the “informational self-determination” interests of users and the economic interests of the Internet economy, thereby increasing legal effectiveness.