Facebook’s data harvesting practices are facing yet another probe in Europe. This time the German federal competition authority (the Bundeskartellamt) is initiating proceedings — rather than it being a European Member State’s national data protection watchdog.
By creating user profiles and having clients sign a permit for their data collection, Facebook helps its advertising customers to better target users, Bundeskartellamt said.
“For this reason it is essential to also examine under the aspect of abuse of market power whether the consumers are sufficiently informed about the type and extent of data collected,” the agency’s head Andreas Mundt explained.
The investigation has been opened into the US-based Facebook Inc., as well as into its subsidiaries in Germany and Ireland.
Zuckerberg’s meeting last week with Angela Merkel’s chief of staff Peter Altmeier has clearly not had the impact he would have hoped for, despite Altmeier tweeting a message saying he had “a really good conversation with a man who changed the world.”
Agencies/Canadajournal
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