Germany has a long, storied history of being both swift and overzealous in their enforcement of privacy and intellectual property laws. Today Germany’s Independent Centre for Privacy Protection has issued a blanket ban on the Facebook Like button. German websites based in the state of Schleswig-Holstein (an area of around 2.8 million people in northern Germany) have until the beginning of October to remove the offending buttons, or face a fine of up to €50,000.
The ICPP’s issue with the Like button stems from the way it tracks users. Any page on which it is installed automatically tracks visitors if clicked, and if a user is logged in to Facebook it can send information about that particular visit back to Facebook’s servers in the US. This data is then used to create a profile of an individual’s activities. The ICPP said in a press release:
“Such a profiling infringes German and European data protection law. There is no sufficient information of users and there is no choice; the wording in the conditions of use and privacy statements of Facebook does not nearly meet the legal requirements relevant for compliance of legal notice, privacy consent and general terms of use.”
They go on to recommend users avoid “clicking on social plug-ins such as the “like”-button and not to set up a Facebook account if they wish to avoid a comprehensive profiling by this company.”
If you wish to show your support for the measure, be sure to tell the state of Schleswig-Holstein on Twitter, or better yet, their Facebook page.
Germany famously ordered Google to allow citizens to have their houses obscured on the search giant’s Street View service, deeming it an invasion of privacy, and just last week a German judge banned sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 throughout Europe at the behest of Apple’s trademark lawyers.
