Facebook likely to face €100,000 fine for keeping deleted data

Facebook likely to face €100,000 fine for keeping deleted data

Social networking site, Facebook, might face a €100,000 (£87,000) fine after Irish data protection commissioner audits the data of the site, as an Austrian law student, Max Schrems has registered 22 complaints against the site for holding his personal data that he deleted far ago since he started using the social network.

Schrems decided to take action agains Facebook after he discovered the social networking site held 1,200 pages of personal data about him, much of which he had deleted. The 24-year-old Schrems decided to ask Facebook for a copy of his data in June after he attended a lecture by a Facebook executive at Santa Clara University in California.

But Schrems was shocked after he received a CD from California which contained messages and information he had deleted from his profile page since he joined the site three years ago. The Austrian decided to log 22 complaints with the Irish data protection commissioner to carry out its first audit of Facebook after he received the data on that CD.

Schrems spoke, “I discovered Facebook had kept highly personal messages I had written and then deleted, which, were they to become public, could be highly damaging to my reputation. I’m not saying there was anything criminal or forbidden there, but let’s just say that, as someone wanting to work in law, there was stuff which could make it pretty impossible for me to get a job.”

The law student added, “By holding on to data its users assumed was deleted, Facebook was acting like the KGB or the CIA. It’s frightening that all this data is being held by Facebook. Of course, they are not misusing it at the moment, but the biggest concern is what happens when there is a privacy breach, either from hackers or from someone inside the firm?”

The Austrian decided to write to Ireland, as he found out that European users are administered by the Irish Facebook subsidiary. The authority confirmed that their officers would be investigating alleged breaches raised by Schrems as part of the audit and if Facebook or any employees are found guilty of data protection breaches, the maximum penalty is a fine of €100,000.

On the other hand, a spokesman for Facebook has claimed they had provided Schrems with all of the information required in response to his request which includes requests for information on a range of other things that are not personal information. he added that the data, and Irish data protection law rightly places some valuable and reasonable limits on the data that has to be provided.

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Posted by Zeeshan Gohar on Oct 22 2011. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry