Meta to compensate half a million German users €100 due to data leak

Meta (formerly Facebook) may be required by the Federal Court in Germany to compensate thousands of users in the country €100 each, according to Bloomberg News.

These are compensation payments for the leakage of private data of approximately half a million Facebook accounts in 2021. The leak allowed a group of hackers to publish the data of 533 million users in Germany and other countries.

In what was described as a "groundbreaking" ruling, the Federal Court of Justice, the highest civil court in Germany, eased the burden of proof for Facebook users seeking compensation for data theft.

From now on, it will be sufficient to show they were victims of the leak without needing to prove they suffered in a particular way. This ruling overturns a decision by a lower court and simplifies the compensation requirement due to the leak, which included phone numbers and email addresses.

Bloomberg noted that two years ago, the Irish Data Protection Commission imposed a €265 million fine on the company for failing to implement "adequate safeguards" to protect privacy.

Meta stated that the ruling does not align with the European Court of Justice's decision, the highest court in the EU, and added that they are confident the latter will accept their expected appeal, arguing that Facebook’s systems were not breached and that there was no data breach.

This is another blow to the company after last week when Meta was fined heavily by the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, which ordered it to pay €797.72 million following "anti-competitive practices" used on the Marketplace platform. Meta stated in a statement that it would appeal the decision, noting that the EU presented no evidence of damage to competitors or consumers.