Facebook users whose data was unlawfully obtained in 2018 and 2019 could receive compensation, a German court said Monday.
Without needing to demonstrate precise monetary losses, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) decided that losing control over one’s data online qualified for damages.
After unidentified third parties were able to access user accounts by guessing phone numbers, thousands of Facebook users in Germany are suing parent firm Meta for inadequate data protection.
The claims will now need to be reexamined after a lower court in Cologne dismissed them in principle in 2021 due to a data breach involving information obtained through the Facebook friend search feature.
The complainant had sought 1,000 euros ($1,056) in damages, but the BGH ruled that, in the absence of evidence of monetary loss, just 100 euros would be reasonable.
The Karlsruhe-based court says the lower court has to decide if Facebook’s terms of use were clear and understandable and whether users gave their agreement voluntarily to use their data.
In the past, Meta has declined to provide compensation, citing the inability of the impacted parties to demonstrate tangible damages.
A Meta spokesperson said the BGH’s ruling was “inconsistent with the recent case law of the European Court of Justice, the highest court in Europe.”
“Similar claims have already been dismissed 6,000 times by German courts, with a large number of judges ruling that no claims for liability or damages exist,” the spokesperson said. “Facebook’s systems were not hacked in this incident, and there was no data breach.”
The leak affected almost six million people in Germany.
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