Facebook Use of Personal Information Found to be in Violation of German Privacy Law

According to a press release from Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (VZBV), on January 16, 2018, the Berlin Regional Court (the Court) ruled that several of Facebook Inc’s default privacy settings and certain provisions of its terms of service and privacy policies violated German consumer law.  The written decision from the Court has yet to be released.

German privacy law requires that personal data of a data subject only be used with the data subject’s informed consent.  The Court held that five default settings in Facebook’s smartphone app violated the requirement for informed consent, as there was no guarantee that users would know that these settings existed.  These provisions included, for example, a location setting that revealed the location data of users chatting with one another, and a default setting that allowed search engines to link to a user’s timeline.

The Court also held that eight provisions contained in Facebook’s terms of service were invalid.  One such provision included a declaration of consent to use names and pictures of users “for commercial, sponsored or related content”.  Notably, another such provision declared the user’s consent to transfer personal information to the USA.

Facebook says it intends to appeal this decision, and that it has made significant changes to its terms of service since the action was brought in Germany.

For more information, see this Reuters article.

Summary By: Michael House