Europe vs Facebook – Austrian students point to facebook terms ‘not in compliance with EU privacy laws’

Tracking changes in Facebook’s privacy policy and pointing to the implications of those changes, has become almost an obsession for a group of Austrian students based in Vienna University. But not only that, the students have made complaints to the Irish Data Protection Authority, pointing to specific shortcomings to be investigated.

More at http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html

Irish Data Protection is the national authority competent for facebook as legally, facebook is incorporated both in the US and – for the rest of the world – in Ireland. The Irish authority has been talking with facebook’s lawyers over compliance to European laws and they also published an “informal audit” of facebook’s policy changes. It appears facebook has accepted and changed some details in their terms but “not enough”, say the initiators of the Europe vs Facebook campaign.

The group, according to a media update (PDF) released on 4 December intends to go to court over what they say are unresolved shortcomings in facebook’s policies that apparently conflict with the European data protection laws.

They have also initiated a crowd funding campaign at https://www.crowd4privacy.org/ to collect the 100.000 to 300.000 Euro needed for those “next step” legal action.

Their site: http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html

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