Online gamblers are flooding data protection authorities with complaints against companies from abroad. They want to get their stakes back.

Gamblers who have gambled with providers from other EU countries are “increasingly relying on possible breaches of data protection law to get their stakes back”. Bettina Gayk, the state data protection officer for North Rhine-Westphalia, announced this. The companies against which complaints are received often come from Malta and do not have a license required for the German market.

Little chance of success

The reason for the complaints is that “information on stakes was not provided to the desired extent or within the statutory one-month period”. The players want to obtain proof of their stakes from previous years and demand their money back from the provider. However, the chances of success are low, especially with regard to data protection law, and repayment is “not a sure-fire success”.

“We have forwarded numerous complaints to the Maltese supervisory authority in recent months. The supervisory authorities of the other federal states and neighboring European countries have also submitted similar complaints,” says Gayk. The Maltese companies offer their games of chance “mostly without the required license on the German market. However, they have been refusing to disclose transaction data for several months, citing a new Maltese law,” according to the LDI NRW [1]. According to the law [2] (PDF), companies may refuse to provide information if they want to use it to defend their legal claims or for legal proceedings.

In October of this year, the data protection supervisory authority in Malta informed the German authorities that it only considers the refusal to provide information to be unlawful “if no action for repayment has yet been filed” and urged companies to provide information. However, the companies only provide information for small bets, and refunds are also rarely made. “We are currently collecting similar complaints and then forwarding them in bundled form to the data protection supervisory authority in Malta,” explains Gayk. The decision of the Maltese data protection authorities is decisive.

Malta’s Bill 55

Bill 55, which was passed in June 2023, also protects the Maltese gambling industry from claims for damages from abroad. There are still unanswered questions at both federal [3] (PDF) and European level [4].

Throughout Germany, players are currently trying to sue for refunds of gambling stakes that were not licensed throughout Germany until 2021. Although the Federal Court of Justice has confirmed in previous proceedings that players can reclaim losses in certain cases, it has also referred the matter to the European Court of Justice.

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Links in diesem Artikel:
[1] https://www.ldi.nrw.de/Online_Gluecksspiel
[2] https://idpc.org.mt/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SL-586.09.pdf
[3] https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/973702/c2ee95b877ecfe6820064ff67d04ef07/EU-6-038-23-pdf-data.pdf
[4] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-003492_EN.html#:~:text=In%20June%2C%20Malta%20amended%20a%20law%20allowing%20gambling,regulations.%20The%20European%20Commission%20is%20reportedly%20investigating%20this
[5] mailto:[email protected]
[6] https://www.facebook.com/heiseonlineEnglish
[7] https://www.linkedin.com/company/104691972
[8] https://social.heise.de/@heiseonlineenglish
[9] https://www.heise.de/news/Um-Geld-zurueckzuholen-Viele-Datenschutzbeschwerden-gegen-Online-Gluecksspiel-10187318.html

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