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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.
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
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.
I was pressured into creating an account when it was first new. I used fake DOB. When my fake birthday rolled around, all the facebook idiots wished me a happy birthday. They had no idea when the real one was.
Let's see here...
-- You were "pressured" into creating an account.
-- You Friended a bunch of people who don't know the actual date of your birthday.
-- Those people you Friended wished you a happy birthday on the date you posted as your date of birth
But it's those people you Friended that are the idiots.
Right.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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."
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.
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.