The Consumer Organization found violations of user privacy and data being collected without prior consent.
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Good news
There are good news coming from Germany for online privacy advocates. According to Reuters, the German consumer rights group announced this Monday that Facebook's use or private data is illegal. The social media platform breached the rights of it's users because they had not gained rightful and well-informed consent from their users.
The verdict was made by a regional Court in Berlin in a wave of investigations on Big Tech companies and their way or retrieving and analyzing personal data in order to use them for super-targeted marketing campaigns.
German Consumer Organisations
The Federation of German Consumer Organisations investigated Facebook's terms of service and has found parts that are not valid for the lawful collection of private information. It is not a surprise, that Facebook deliberately deceives their users and hides privacy related settings in their configuration panel.
One of the main consumer concerns was that the user location tracking is enabled by default on smartphones. In other settings most privacy-related settings were disabled by default to allow default spying on the users online behavior.
What's next?
Now the 2 Billion user social-media Giant has the right to appeal to the courts against this ruling. We can only speculate how this story unfolds further, but I think that informing users about the collected data in a meaningful way and scrutinizing the mechanisms in which they are being analyzed is a big step forward, in the efforts to ensure a more private and safe environment in the online space.
- Niko ( @cryptonik ) -
It is encouraging that at least some government seems concerned for citizens privacy but I feel like this doesn't change a whole lot for Facebook.
People just need to get educated about what is going on and act accordingly.
What do you think this might mean for the rest of the world, if the court's decision isn't overturned in FB's favour?
Hard to say, but Germany is known for paying attention to consumer rights (a bit more that others) so it could mean there would be a positive change locally. Disabled services and perhaps clearer disclaimers. And most importantly raising awareness.
Yes, I think the public is blissfully unaware of much of what goes on in the back rooms of big biz. Too trusting by far.
thanks for the heads up, my guess is that this would also trickle down into the EU consumer laws (hopefully)
That's very interesting and encouraging. Sort of obvious in a way. I wonder if anything significant will come of it though. These big companies just seem to negotiate a settlement or pay a find and move on to other nefarious activity.
Great observation @gillianpearce. However, in this case it is different. I am surprised Germany even came this far to disclosing FB's misconduct (that is happening in all countries). Germany does have the power to completely shut down a service that is not compliant, like they did with Uber. Since we are talking about preservation of human rights, this is a positive example of the Governments being actually useful.
Thanks for the clarification @cryptonik. It will be interesting to see what happens next then! 😊
Nice and interisting..
Cheers mate.
Interesting, thank you for the information 😀
You are welcome :)
Wow, interesting case. I'm curious how will the situation develop and what may the repercussions be. Thank you for this post @cryptonik, interesting as always! :)
Thank you for visiting, me too!
Hopefully this drives people to other secure and advertisement free platforms like steemit