A German court said on Monday (November 18) that Facebook users whose data was illegally obtained in 2018 and 2019 are entitled to compensation.
The Federal Court of Justice has ruled that loss of control over personal data is a valid reason to receive compensation, without the need to prove specific financial loss, reports
Thousands of Facebook users in Germany are demanding compensation from the company Meta, due to insufficient protection of their data, after unknown third parties were able to access user accounts by guessing phone numbers.
The claims stem from a 2021 security breach that affected information obtained through Facebook’s friend search function. Initially, the complaints were dismissed by the lower court in Cologne, but the case is to be re-examined. The plaintiffs asked for 1,000 euros in damages, but the Federal Court of Justice said that around 100 euros would be an adequate amount, in the absence of evidence of financial loss. According to the Karlsruhe court, the lower court must determine whether Facebook’s terms of use were transparent and easy to understand and whether users’ consent to the use of their data was given voluntarily.
Previously, the Meta company refused to pay compensation, arguing that the affected people could not prove concrete damages. A Meta spokesperson said that the decision of the Federal Court of Justice “is not consistent with a recent case from the Court of Justice of the European Union, the highest court in Europe”.
“Similar claims have already been rejected 6,000 times by German courts, with a large number of judges ruling that there are no claims for liability or damages,” the spokesperson said, adding that “Facebook’s systems were not hacked in this incident and there was no security breach.”
Almost six million people in Germany were affected by this data leak.
