A very hotly debated topic at the moment in Germany is the data privacy law compliance of the Facebook “like” button and Facebook fan pages. After lengthy discussions and examinations by administrative authorities, the data protection authority in the northern German state Schleswig-Holstein issued a press release on 18 August 2011
all website operators to shut down their fan pages on Facebook and remove social plug-ins such as the “like” button from their websites.
After a thorough legal and technical analysis the authority concluded that these features violate the German Telemedia Act as well as the Federal Data Protection Act. The commissioner argued that by using these Facebook services, traffic and content data would be transferred into the U.S. and a qualified feedback would be sent back to the website operator, including data on the web page usage, without a valid legal basis.
Website operators are facing an end of September deadline for deactivating like buttons and fan pages. In case of non-compliance, the commissioner has announced further steps, including prohibition orders pursuant to Sec. 38 par. 5 Federal Data Protection Act as well as administrative fines.
