Czechs, beware! Ministries received the Big Brother anti-award — they wanted to know which websites you visit

The IuRe organization announced the 21st annual Big Brother Awards, Czech anti-awards for the biggest privacy infringements. This year’s list of recipients includes several names that are not exactly a surprise for readers of technology websites — and one that shows where privacy issues are heading.

Volkswagen and Cariad

In the Corporate Snooper category, the Volkswagen group, specifically its subsidiary software company Cariad, won. It processed sensitive data about users and the movement of electric vehicles from VW, Audi, Seat, and Škoda brands — and left them freely accessible on an Amazon server. Ethical hackers from the German non-profit Chaos Computer Club discovered the blunder. Although Volkswagen quickly secured the data, according to IuRe, the leaked package also contained data on the movement of Hamburg police cars and parking data from a Berlin brothel.

Years ago, the Mozilla Foundation called modern cars the worst category of consumer electronics in terms of privacy protection. Electric vehicles only emphasize this thesis — they are packed with sensors and essentially permanently online. And as Volkswagen showed, the question is not whether someone will make a mistake, but how big it will be.

Meta Pixel and a hidden channel in Android

Meta received the award in the Long-term Snooper category. The jury selected it for the Meta Pixel tool, which is estimated to be embedded on about a fifth of the most visited websites and collects data about visitors for ad targeting.

In short: Meta found a way to establish communication between its applications installed on your phone (Facebook, Instagram) and the Pixel running in a web browser. This created a hidden channel that links your anonymous web behavior with the identity under which you are logged into the mobile application. The result: VPNs and ad blockers won’t help you much in this case. As IuRe director Jan Vobořil mentioned, Meta appears in the nominations practically every year, but continues its practices.

The state wanted to know which websites you visit

The Ministries of Interior and Industry and Trade received the Official Snooper anti-award. In March 2025, they submitted an amendment to a decree that would expand universally collected operational and location data to include internet communication. Instead of today’s data on the connection itself, information about the “end party of communication” — practically data on visited websites — was to be collected.

The proposal was submitted without consultation with interested parties, was uncovered by journalists, and ended up shelved after public criticism. The jury adds one unpleasant remark: even the current data collection under the data retention regime was deemed illegal by the Supreme Court a few months ago. However, it continues.

Encryption is not a civil right, says Danish minister

The Big Brother Statement category was dominated by Danish Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard with the statement that “we must get rid of the misconception that using encrypted communication applications is a civil right”. The statement was made in the context of the European ChatControl initiative, which aims to universally scan the content of online communication to combat child pornography.

Brno students said no to a forced application

The only positive award went to students of Masaryk University. At the turn of 2024 and 2025, they opposed the ISIC card operator’s plan, according to which card renewals were to take place exclusively via a mobile application. The students insisted on maintaining a non-digital option and argued, among other things, with privacy concerns — they convinced the university management with the results of their own survey.

The compulsion to use smartphones and applications appears more and more frequently in the anti-awards. Last year, loyalty applications of retail chains won in the corporate snooper category, and the year before last, an activist fighting against water vending machines that only work with an application received a positive award. The good news, at least, is that the pressure against this form of “mandatory digitalization” is coming this time from young people — that is, from the group that is often referred to as the main driver of the digital transition.

Which of this year’s awarded snooping practices annoys you the most personally?

Source: bigbrotherawards.cz