Facebook faces German antitrust privacy probe

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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.

So rather than privacy regulations being the jumping off point for this latest probe of Facebook’s business practices, the company is being investigated ostensibly on antitrust grounds. But its data harvesting practices are being linked with German competition law on account of Facebook’s dominant market position in the country.

News of the investigation was reported earlier by Fortune.

The specific accusation is that Facebook is using unlawful terms and conditions related to its collection and use of user data, and given the T&Cs are a condition for access to its service the suspicion is that could constitute an abuse of a dominant market position.

“It is difficult for users to understand and assess the scope of the agreement accepted by them. There is considerable doubt as to the admissibility of this procedure, in particular under applicable national data protection law. If there is a connection between such an infringement and market dominance, this could also constitute an abusive practice under competition law,” writes the German competition authority.
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