German Court Rules Facebook Use of Personal Data Illegal (reuters.com) 79
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."
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Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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.
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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 Isla
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"It takes very little to kill Germany's economy and, with it, the whole EU." - cute.
Re: Well... (Score:3)
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.
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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
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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.
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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.
Re:Won't affect FB much... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Which German servers?
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"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.
Re:Won't affect FB much... (Score:4, Informative)
EULAs/TOS agreements are basic law
Neither of those things are laws, FYI.
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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
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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 jus
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facebook the ultimate vetor for id theft. (Score:1)
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 u
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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.
Anyone... (Score:2)
... care to speak up for the users?
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Yeah. Don't be one.
Result: More annoying popus for Germans (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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You're supposed to get annoyed. That's the intent. When enough users get annoyed, the idea is that sites will switch to not using cookies to track you.
Note that cookies needed to preserve website session information (like login) are exempt from the warning - it's the tracking cookies that require a warning. And the site owner can disable the tracking, and thus not piss off the users. Some sites have, which means the law has a positive effect.
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No, just that at this point the Germans aren't a bunch of facist racist losers like the 3rd world USA has become
They would actually probably do things like banning torture
Improving the economy
Making sensible policy
Reversing racist immigration policy
Improving the divide between rich and poor
Implimenting the rule of law so it operates as it should, blind. Which is in stark contrast to how it works now which is a lot closer to indias caste system
They just all around seem to embody the ideals that americas PR
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Snort, use of cookies is endemic and will not change. Everyone just clicks through the popups so _NOBODY_ changes the websites to not use cookies so the only end result is more annoying popups.
The end result isn't less use of cookies but more annoying popups.
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The end result isn't less use of cookies but more annoying popups.
Competition. When you have the choice between two sites, where one of them have annoying popups because they use tracking and the other one doesn't because they don't, which one are you more likely to come back to?
The pop-ups are annoying. And thus tracking cookies will be selected against. It won't happen overnight, but slowly but surely, sites that don't have to display the warning/acceptance button will have an advantage in retaining visitors. No matter how small an advantage, over time it will chang
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Competition? Oh, you're _hilarious_. What's the competition for Facebook, hmmm? Google Plus? Tencent?
What's the competition for Slashdot where I'd still get the /. community (which for _some_ subjects is the only reason I haven't completely abandoned /.)?
There is no competition for many of the sites that have been forced into spamming me with cookie authorisation popups, there is just the new reality that given that I'm reading in France there are now many popups that people in other countries don't have to
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Snort, "competition will solve everything"... You're _hilarious_!!!
What pray tell is the "competition" for Facebook? Google Plus, LOL??? Tencent, ROFL???
Whats the "competition" for Slashdot that also has (what remains of it's geekdom readership & Mod system? Reddit?
How about the "competition" for the nasaspaceflight forums?
"Competition" will _NOT_ solve everything and imposing the stupid cookie popups just saddled us french Internet users with more stupid popups.
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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.
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Creating bureaucracies to administrate arbitrary rules is freedom to you?
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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.
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Good luck with that plan. I'm highly skeptical that you've accomplished anything beyond giving some parasites a useless job.
This will eventually happen in Canada too (Score:1)
It's fairly obvious that you can't have informed consent for babies and cats, let alone teens who pretend to be 18.
Protect your brand for German courts (Score:2)
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.
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That's not how the EU works, nor how privacy and consumer protection works in the EU.
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The more EU courts, German law moves in to control, the more useful US freedoms become to users around the world.
Contracts never override Law (Score:2)
Contracts never override Law.
Otherwise Canibalism and Slavery would be legal as long as someone is stupid enough to sign a contract.
define "personal information" (Score:2)
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 t