Facebook’s data collating is ‘limitless’

FACEBOOK has been accused of “limitless” collection of its users’ data by Germany’s competition watchdog, in the first major assessment of the social network’s market dominance.

The Federal Cartel Office (FCO) said Facebook was a “quasi-monopoly” that was abusing its position to force its users to give up data. Unlike its US peer Google, which has been fined billions for monopoly practices, Facebook has to date avoided scrutiny of its market share. The FCO, in a preliminary assessment, said that Facebook had a market share of more than 90pc. It said that users are in effect unable to switch to another service, and that as a result, do not “effectively consent” to having their data collected on other services.

In addition to the profile information users willingly hand over to Facebook, the social network collects information such as browsing histories from thirdparty websites and other services it owns, like Instagram and Whatsapp.

The regulator said this was in breach of data protection rules. “The authority holds the view that Facebook is abusing this dominant position by making the use of its social network conditional on its being allowed to limitlessly amass every kind of data generated by using third-party websites and merge it with the user’s Facebook account,” it said.

“Facebook’s users are oblivious as to which data from which sources are being merged to develop a detailed profile of them and their online activities.”

Facebook labelled the decision “inaccurate”. “We’ve repeatedly had to change to keep up with what people want … our size does not allow us to create products and force people to use them. That’s how a company acts in a competitive marketplace,” it said.