German high court rules Facebook ‘Friend Finder’ is unlawful

It’s not exactly clear what the future holds for the Friend Finder feature, but it’s likely that Facebook will have to stop using the current iteration in Germany, unless appropriate changes have been made to the tool since the case was filed six years ago. Currently, Facebook offers a way to import e-mail contacts within a feature called “Find Friends”, with the following explanation: “Find Friends uploads contacts from your device and stores them on Facebook’s servers where they may be used to help others search for people or to generate friend suggestions for you and others”.

Well, a high court in Germany has said that the feature is “unlawful”, that encourages users to market Facebook to their contacts.

Prior to this, two lower courts in Berlin in 2012 and 2014 ruled that the social media network violated German regulations about data protection.

This decision could also pave the way for the Federation of German Consumer Organizations to clamp down on other online networks that utilize this form of marketing.

The federal court also said Facebook had not adequately informed members about how it was using this data.

The Federal Court of Justice ruled that this constitutes advertising harassment. The ruling said that Facebook may not use address book data for promotional purposes, as the people whose data it belongs to have not consented to their email addresses being used in this way. “Consumers do not want to be bothered”.

A Facebook in Germany rep told Reuters that the company will look at the court’s ruling “to assess any impact on our services”.

“You can import your list of contacts from other places (ex: your email account, your phone) and we’ll find your friends for you”.