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German Court Rules Facebook Use of Personal Data Illegal (reuters.com)
A German consumer rights group said on Monday that a court had found Facebook's use of personal data to be illegal because the U.S. social media platform did not adequately secure the informed consent of its users. From a report: The verdict, from a Berlin regional court, comes as Big Tech faces increasing scrutiny in Germany over its handling of sensitive personal data that enables it to micro-target online advertising. The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (vzvb) said that Facebook's default settings and some of its terms of service were in breach of consumer law, and that the court had found parts of the consent to data usage to be invalid. "Facebook hides default settings that are not privacy-friendly in its privacy center and does not provide sufficient information about it when users register," said Heiko Duenkel, litigation policy officer at the vzvb. "This does not meet the requirement for informed consent."
Um, having users is Facebook's entire business model. They aren't going to risk losing users by pulling out of any country. They will bend over backward to accommodate governments if they can get into a country.
... care to speak up for the users?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
If push comes to shove, Facebook can pull their German servers, and give the middle finger to them.
That would be giving the middle finger to themselves. I don't see why they would do that.
Plus, FB users agreed to this, and EULAs/TOS agreements are basic law that both parties agreed to.
EULAs and TOS are not above the law.
Yet their victims will think Germany is the foe.
Nein. Vee vill march on you first eef you do dis.
You think GERMANY would be the loser in that case? That's hilarious.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Oh noes, a country has protected its citizens against a multinational corporation! That's against everything America stands for!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Much like the French judgment that users need to be informed about the use of cookies on websites, all that is going to change in the end is that the users are going to be getting more popups with a refined text that nobody reads to click on to use the services in question.
How do I know this? because it's exactly what I see when connecting to websites that use cookies from France, including Slashdot.
About once a week, when clicking on a frontpage link on Slashdot, I get a "Warning you are in France and need to click on this button stating that you are OK with Slashdot using cookies to track you". It's fracking annoying to tell the truth. Why must I renew my acceptance _EVERY_FRACKING_WEEK?!? Because the stupid law says that "All sites can only keep cookies for a week and must ask again every time the cookie times out".
Clicking every week (which I will do because I want to use Slashdot & that Germans will do because they want to use Facebook) will change precisely nothing but make a bunch of obsessive people who write laws ever so slightly happier.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Most facebook users are retards.
I know of a fb user who was careful not to give her personal information in her profile. She USED to like fb to keep up with friends and distant relations.
After spending the time giving fake DOB, and other information, the fb dipshits - who were told better - wished her happy birthday on her real birthday and blabbed a bunch of other personal information about her.
You can be careful, but other facebook users are morons.
As an experiment and to prove a point, I asked to call up her bank and for all the security questions, I would answer - I wrote them down so that the customer service drone wouldn't think I was holding her hostage.
I answered all of the bank's security questions just from her fb page. SSN? Well, how hard is that to get these days?
Which German servers?
bickerdyke
The forced use of real names has been declared illegal as well, because the law requests that people can use aliases and FB just ignores that law.
"If push comes to shove, Facebook can pull their German servers, and give the middle finger to them."
The users are the product, not their clients.
There are probably a hundred German developers newly out of school that would love to fill that gap. It's not like it would be that hard. So it gets fragmented in the beginning because everyone does their own thing. Eventually they learn to get along or it settles out into a few favorites. That's how capitalism is *supposed* to work, in fact, not to mention the internet.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Anything that knows the tech industry down a peg is a good thing in my books.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Until you can make your own integrated circuits at home, I think we'll need a rather large and costly tech industry to support our modern life style. Frankly I don't think it likely that universities will start building foundries and running them on government grants to supply CPUs to the masses, not even in Europe.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The summary alone explains how it is not just 'people being stupid', but rather a systematic manipulation. But you might be too full of yourself to understand the difference, because no one ever pulls one over on you apparently.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I've read Facebook's terms, and that's why I don't have an account. Literally everyone else I know has an account, and none of them have read the terms. This is not a problem among some minority of willfully uninformed idiots, this is a problem that exists for the vast majority of internet users today.
Creating bureaucracies to administrate arbitrary rules is freedom to you?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yes. It's a type of freedom. Not having to spend however many hours a year fighting tracking on the Internet means I can spend those hours doing something else.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
EULAs/TOS agreements are basic law
Neither of those things are laws, FYI.
It seems you don't understand the concept of law and more specifically consumer law.
Companies like FB are to abide by those (consumer) laws and are obliged is to protect the privacy of their clients.
Well, at least that's how it works on this side of the ocean.
One simple example of the BS they are up to, we all know they use facial recognition software.
A few months ago we were visiting a cave and a group photo was made for prints to be sold at the exit.
I ducked because just suppose there was some Islamist in the group and I would be associated with him after someone proudly posted the pic on Facebook.
Next trip to the USofA I would have to answer a lot of stupid questions by your homeland security.
Yes I insinuate they are buddies with the American three letter agencies.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Plus, FB users agreed to this, and EULAs/TOS agreements are basic law that both parties agreed to.
EULAs and TOS are not above the law.
Better, these are in conflict with the law and thus null and void.
Next ISP's will be ordered to block those services and the vast majority will find a friendlier service.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
It's fairly obvious that you can't have informed consent for babies and cats, let alone teens who pretend to be 18.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Data privacy is important in the EU including Germany. That implies that big companies can get in trouble when they mess with us which is a good thing. Unfortunately this protection stops when the car industry poisons the atmosphere.
Given all the legal activism by German courts what can US and multinational brands do?
Move their "German" services to a less legal invasive EU zone like Austria? Switzerland? Namibia? Slovenia? Then sell back into Germany via Germans seeking a service that is not censored by German courts.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Contracts never override Law.
Otherwise Canibalism and Slavery would be legal as long as someone is stupid enough to sign a contract.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Germany has a long history of misuse of large, collected personal data and metadata. The Nazis did a very efective task of seeking out political dissidence and undesirables before and during World War II. The Stasi in East Germany inherited some of the structure, and much of the ruthless and centralized approach to gathering personal data both through organized statistics and through personal informants. Part of the unification of Germany was the rejection of that kind of personal monitoring for the unified nation: they've experienced its broad use against even the most innocent of civilians, and now automatically respond harshly to the possibility of personal monitoring.
Their resulting privacy laws are now a good model in the modern, technological age of protecting individuals. It surprises older people like myself who remember East Germany's abuses, performed with guidance and support from their sponsors in the Soviet Union, very well.
If it would be that easy for facebook, they would not be US based but offshore and not following any law. But they depend on the countries and the users and especially the advertisers. ... a net loss for facebook.
When facebook cuts off germany, many users would circumvent it, but others would not and this would lead to other networks growing and new networks forming. And they not only get the users, but also the advertisers. And may get users from other countries as well
And don't be fooled, monopolies like google and facebook are instable equilibriums. A small change and a lot changes. They only seem so stable, because the companies do A LOT of balancing things to keep them stable. Start ignoring things and just keep it running for a few months and suddenly everything will start moving. Users try new things, market will change, etc.
Its no surprise, that such networks use A LOT of psychology to prevent users from leaving their platform i.e. for links and try to push more "native content" so users spend more time inside their app instead of seeing there is more web than just their current social network.
And other companies and creative people start noticing. More and more creatives try to encourage users to follow their newsletter or RSS (more often newsletters, as they are easier to use for novice users). Because they noticed that facebook & co are not their friends. But bury their content in some huge spammy feed, possibly even hiding it because the algorithms decided you won't need your daily webcomic today.
And when you think about monetization such monopolies hurt the publishers a lot. They are just caught in a dilemma about more reach and more money per user.
"It takes very little to kill Germany's economy and, with it, the whole EU." - cute.
Please define personal information. In the age of everything connected, facial recognition, cell phone always on what's personal. We've voluntarily given up the right
to a sense of person and privacy. Facebook takes this to the evil extreme linking you location to your preferences for profiling making your privacy and your personal information their property. you don't have to tell them anything.
I for one welcome this kind of ruling but Facebook is the tip of the iceberg and once companies realized that they can go beyond their modest data collection interests what's to stop any company that has a profile of you, your habits and your locations to sell or misuse it?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"