Global tech giant Meta has been told by the EU’s highest court that it must limit the amount of data it can use when creating personalised advertising, particularly regarding sensitive data such as sexual orientation, race or ethnicity.

The ruling comes after Austrian privacy activist and lawyer Max Schrems took the firm to court claiming that he was being shown adverts which were specifically directed at gay people, despite never consensually passing on information regarding his sexuality.

According to the BBC report, Schrems has also been instrumental in driving a further series of claims against the company, with one case leading to Meta receiving a £988m ($1.3bn) GDPR fine 

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Questions around the initial claim were referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) by the Austrian Supreme Court in 2021, but the case was paused until 2024.

“Meta has basically been holding a huge data pool on users for 20 years now, and it is growing every day. However, EU law requires ‘data minimisation’,” said Schrems’ lawyer Katharina Raabe-Stuppnig.

The court defined data minimisation as when companies must develop data management protocols that gradually delete unneeded information (other than when it is kept for legal reasons) or stop it being used in other ways – such as for advertising.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recently accepted Meta’s proposals to change how it uses customer data across Facebook Marketplace, after it made changes that require advertisers to opt in or out of their data being used to improve the service.

Previously advertisers had to make a choice to opt out. Beyond Facebook, Google has also come under fire from the CMA for “abusing its position” in the ad tech market.