FB can’t track users’ online life without consent: Germany

Germany’s competition authority has ruled that Facebook cannot gather and combine personal data across platforms and websites unless users give permission, a decision that could have wide-ranging implications on the company’s ability to target advertising.

“In future, Facebook will no longer be allowed to force its users to agree to the practically unrestricted collection and assigning of non-Facebook data to their Facebook user accounts,” Andreas Mundt, president of the Federal Cartel Office, said on Thursday. “The combination of data sources,” the cartel authority said, “substantially contributed to the fact that Facebook was able to build a unique database for each individual user and thus to gain market power.”

Facebook said it disagreed with the ruling and that German authorities had underestimated the competition the firm faced in the country. It will have one month to appeal and four months to send remedies to the Federal Cartel Office. The decision by the cartel authority allows Facebook to continue collecting data from its services like WhatsApp and Instagram. But it will not be permitted to link this information to Facebook user accounts unless a user has explicitly consented.

Facebook will be prohibited also from combining data from third-party websites and connecting it with a Facebook account without the consent of the user, the ruling said. The company has been able to monitor users’ activity on third-party sites through its “Like” and “Share” buttons, and through a tracking service called Facebook Pixel. NYT