Data protection: Facebook pinned by German justice

The court also believes that the ability for search engines, such as Google, to index a user's Facebook profile should be disabled by default. In this state, the user, if he wants to make his profile inaccessible from a search engine, must manually disable this option in the settings of Facebook.

The German judge also blamed Facebook's way of presenting users with its name policy. According to the VZBZ( Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband), the fact that Facebook asks its members to use their true identity is contrary to German law, which allows the pseudonym. In its decision, the court did not pronounce on the legality of this requirement and preferred to apply another text of law. It therefore found that this requirement misled users and biased the consent given by users to Facebook to collect their data.

Facebook is appealing

The social network has been ordered to comply with German law, or to pay a fine of up to 250,000 euros "for each violation found." Facebook has appealed, however, and has already made significant changes since the start of the procedure in 2015.

The VZBV is also determined to appeal, not satisfied with the rejection of his complaint about a Facebook advertisement: the court did not consider it relevant to ban advertising "Facebook is free"; advertising that the association deems false. "Consumers do not pay the use of Facebook in euros, but with their data. And they bring a lot of money to the company, "says Heiko Dünkel, representative of the VZBV.

In Germany, Facebook is also awaiting the conclusions of the anti-cartel office, responsible for ruling on a possible abuse of dominant position, Facebook being criticized for using information collected on other services belonging to him, such as than Whatsapp and Instagram.