German Government Takes Legal Action Against Facebook; Saving Private Data of Non-Members for Marketing Purposes
July 8th, 2010Via: BBC:
German officials have launched legal proceedings against Facebook for accessing and saving the personal data of people who do not use the site.
Facebook could face fines of tens of thousands of euros under privacy laws.
The social networking firm confirmed it had received a letter about the action.
“We consider the saving of data from third parties, in this context, to be against data privacy laws,” said Johannes Caspar, head of Hamburg’s Data Protection Authority.
Mr Caspar said he had received a number of complaints from people who had not signed up to Facebook, but whose details had been added to the site by friends. He accused Facebook of saving private data of non-members without their permission, to be used for marketing purposes.
Switzerland is also reported to be concerned about the use of third-party data.
Facebook has until 11 August to formally reply to the legal complaint against it.
The California-based company told the BBC in an email that it was “currently reviewing (the complaint) and will readily respond to it within the given time frame”.
“Millions of Germans come to Facebook each day to find their friends, share information with them and connect to the world around them,” wrote spokesman Stefano Hessel.
Facebook has nearly 500 million users worldwide but according to figures by ComScore is only the fourth biggest social network in Germany.
