Setback for Facebook in Germany – sharp criticism of the data collection

the Agency claims that Facebook has taken advantage of their dominant position in order to identify users beyond what is permitted.

– In the future, will Facebook be allowed to force their users to accept, in practice, unlimited collection, " says competition authority head Andreas Mundt to the Reuters news agency.

largely focused on how users can be mapped even though they are not logged in, when they visit pages with the Facebook like or share button is located. Also criticized how the company collects information from other apps than the standard Facebookappen and put it all together in the same account. The case of including Whatsapp and Instagram, both owned by Facebook.

Decision shall enter into force only about a month. Until then, the Facebook the opportunity to appeal, as already announced will take place. Facebook claims that the competition authority has underestimated how tough the competition the company faced in Germany and how it abides by data protection laws.

But the competition authority claims that Facebook must ask users if explicit, voluntary permission for the collection of information about them on external websites and apps. Within a year Facebook to develop ways to severely limit how data is collected and processed, in case the user does not give his approval. This provided that the decision stands.

has started the investigations about Facebook and how the service handles privacy and data protection issues. In October of last year called the uk data protection authority-a-half million pounds, then the maximum amount that could be required, for ”serious violations of data protection laws”. The investigation had been started by reason of the scandal surrounding the Cambridge Analytica, who took the part of tens of millions of users ' profiles and took advantage of them in political campaigns.

Before christmas, started the irish competent authority for data protection an investigation into Facebook after a security hole that affected 50 million accounts were discovered. Where, it may be significantly larger sums – a maximum of can Facebook be forced to pay 1.6 billion u.s. dollars, corresponding to almost sek 15 billion.