Autorità tedesca per la concorrenza avvisa FB che sta abusando della posizione dominante. <http://www.bundeskartellamt.de/SharedDocs/Meldung/EN/Pressemitteilungen/2017...> The Bundeskartellamt has informed the company Facebook in writing of its preliminary legal assessment in the abuse of dominance proceeding which the authority is conducting against Facebook. Based on the current stage of the proceedings, the authority assumes that Facebook is dominant on the German market for social networks. The authority holds the view that Facebook is abusing this dominant position by making the use of its social network conditional on its being allowed to limitlessly amass every kind of data generated by using third-party websites and merge it with the user's Facebook account. These third-party sites include firstly services owned by Facebook such as WhatsApp or Instagram, and secondly websites and apps of other operators with embedded Facebook APIs. Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: /""We are mostly concerned about the collection of data outside Facebook's social network and the merging of this data into a user's Facebook account. Via APIs, data are transmitted to Facebook and are collected and processed by Facebook even when a Facebook user visits other websites. This even happens when, for example, a user does not press a "like button” but has called up a site into which such a button is embedded. Users are unaware of this. And from the current state of affairs we are not convinced that users have given their effective consent to Facebook's data tracking and the merging of data into their Facebook account. The extent and form of data collection violate mandatory European data protection principles."/ [...] According to the Bundeskartellamt's preliminary assessment, Facebook's terms of service are at least in this aspect inappropriate and violate data protection provisions to the disadvantage of its users. In view of the company's dominant position, it can also not be assumed that users effectively consent to this form of data collection and processing. In this proceeding the Bundeskartellamt focuses on the collection and use of user data from third party sources. The proceeding does not concern the collection and use of data on the Facebook network itself. The Bundeskartellamt leaves explicitly open whether this also constitutes a violation of data protection provisions and the abuse of a dominant position. Users cannot expect data which is generated when they use services other than Facebook to be added to their Facebook account to this extent. Data are already transmitted from websites and apps to Facebook when a user calls them up or installs them, provided they have an embedded API. There are millions of such APIs embedded in German websites and apps. In the authority's assessment, consumers must be given more control over these processes and Facebook needs to provide them with suitable options to effectively limit this collection of data. /[...]/