The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is conducting five separate investigation into Facebook and Google for possible breaches of consumer and competition laws.
Alongside its 23 recommendations within the Digital Platforms Inquiry, the ACCC also revealed it is investigating alleged conduct under the Competition and Consumer Act and Australian Consumer Law.
The ACCC expects to finish the investigations by the end of the year.
“Given the nature of the issues being investigated, the potential impact on the significant numbers of Australian consumers who use Google and Facebook’s services and the significant industry and community interest in the matters being considered in the Inquiry, the ACCC considers it to be in the public interest to disclose these investigations,” it said in the report.
“The investigations are continuing, and the ACCC has not formed a view on the issues being investigated,” the report states.
These include:
- whether access restrictions imposed by a digital platform on a third-party app developer raise issues under section 46 of the CCA
- whether representations made by Google to some users about the control users have over Google’s collection of location data, raise issues under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL)
- whether representations by Google about its privacy policy, and the level of disclosure about subsequent privacy policy changes that enabled Google to combine or match different sets of user data, raise issues under the ACL
- whether representations made by Facebook (and/or its related entities) in relation to the nature of its services and the scope of its terms and conditions, including terms and conditions that allowed user data to be shared with third parties, raise issues under the ACL
- whether terms of use and privacy policies used by Facebook (and/or its related entities) contain unfair contract terms
Penalties for corporations that breach certain provisions of the ACL include a maximum fine of $10 million, three times the value of the benefit received, or 10% of annual turnover in preceding 12 months.
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