Meta risks being on the hook for compensation claims from thousands of German users after the company lost in the Federal Court, Germany’s highest court in civil cases.
Meta risks being on the hook for compensation claims from thousands of German users after the company lost in the Federal Court, Germany’s highest court in civil cases.
The case concerns a large-scale data leak in 2021, when personal information about 533 million Facebook users, including phone numbers and email addresses, appeared on the hacker site, writes Bloomberg.
Federal Court has eased the evidentiary requirements for Facebook users seeking compensation for data theft. It is enough to show that they were victims of the leak, and they do not need to further prove that they suffered from it, the court said in a statement.
Compensation is likely to be around 100 euros ($106).
The Cologne court must now re-examine the claim, following the recommendations of the Federal Court.
Meta noted that the decision of the higher court does not correspond to the case law of the Court of the EU, the highest judicial instance of the bloc of 27 countries. The company said it was confident it would win again in a lower court because Facebook’s systems were not hacked and there was no data breach.
Meta has previously won 6,000 judgments in lawsuits, company lawyers said in October, arguing that number indicates an 85 percent success rate.
Last week in the European Union, Meta was fined 800 million euros for automatic access of users to Facebook Marketplace.
