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Want to book a Ryanair flight? Prepare for a face scan

Ryanair forces new customers to create an account. Also, they must go through a mandatory verification process that can involve facial recognition.

If customers don’t want their biometric data to be processed, Ryanair requires them to send them a hand-written signature and a copy of their government ID. It seems that the real purpose of the verification process is to prevent online travel agencies from setting up accounts to buy and subsequently re-sell Ryanair flights on their websites. By forcing users to create an account to buy a plane ticket, the airline violates the data minimisation principle according to Article 5(1)(c) GDPR.

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