The Spanish authority responsible for data protection in Spain is demanding that Facebook pay a fine of 1.2 million euros, after it found three cases in which the social network collected personal data from its Spanish users without informing them of how it would be used.
The incident adds to a growing list of legal issues that Facebook needs to resolve immediately. According to Politico's Mark Scott , the French, German and Dutch governments are examining how much data Facebook collects and how it uses it, especially on their citizens.
The Spanish data protection authority stated that Facebook's privacy policy contains “general and vague terms”, which facilitates the social network in collecting data without the users' consent.
Facebook is likely to appeal the decision. It previously overturned a similar ruling in Belgium, arguing that its Irish meant it was subject only to Irish law.
The 1.2 million euros are naturally crumbs for a company that has revenue only from the 2nd quarter of 2017, 9.32 billion dollars.
Nevertheless, a Facebook spokesperson told TNW:
“We know the DPA's decision with which we respectfully disagree. While we appreciate the opportunities we had to convince the DPA of how seriously we take the privacy of people using Facebook, we intend to appeal this decision.
“As we made clear to the DPA, users choose what information they want to add to their profile and share with others, such as their religion. However, we do not use this information to target individuals with advertisements.”
“Facebook has been compliant for some time with EU law on data protection through our installation in Ireland. We remain open to continuing discussion of these issues with the DPA, while working alongside the head regulator of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner and preparing for the new EU data protection regulation from 2018.”
