German Court Rules Facebook Guilty Of Privacy Breaches

Amid heated debates over privacy concerns both nationally and internationally, a German court has ruled that Facebook is using user data illegally as it does not adequately secure the user’s consent before acquiring it, Reuters has reported.

Big tech companies like Google and Facebook have been facing massive scrutiny over alleged breaches of user privacy for targeted micro-advertising.

The German court has ruled that Facebook’s default settings aren’t privacy friendly and the help centre doesn’t provide enough clarity when users register to the platform.

“This does not meet the requirement for informed consent,” the group behind the case said in a statement on its website. Facebook is set to challenge the ruling.

Facebook has been found guilty of pre-activating a service that reveals a user’s location to the person he/she is chatting with. Also, user’s timeline were by default open to search engines which allowed easy discovery of their profiles.

Facebook has over 2 billion users worldwide and has been trying to update its terms of service to make it more compliant with privacy protection laws. A statement released by Facebook read that it had already made significant changes to its terms of service and data protection guidelines since the case was first brought in 2015.

Privacy concerns have also begun to emerge in India, with the Supreme Court currently hearing a case about alleged privacy breaches caused by Aadhar.

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