Feb 12, 2018
Facebook broke German privacy laws, court rules
Privacy rights campaigners are claiming victory over Facebook in a German legal battle. Facebook intends to appeal, but believes that planned changes to the app will ensure it obeys the law. The judgement was issued by Berlin Regional Court on 16 January, but has only just been publicised by Vzbv. The consumer group's case was based on the country's Federal Data Protection Act, which says that in order to gain consent, tech firms must be clear about the nature, scope and purpose of the way they use customers' data. The court agreed that Facebook had not done enough to alert people to the fact that it had pre-ticked several privacy settings. The new law states that privacy notices must be in clear and plain language, and explicitly says that pre-ticked boxes and other forms of default consent will not be acceptable.
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