I’ve just noticed this article from the Press Association.

In it, they report that Germany’s consumer protection minister (pictured right) Ilse Aigner has complained about the way Facebook are handling private user data.

She told German weekly news magazine ‘Focus’ that “It poses a problem for me if Facebook’s profits are partly based on breaching existing laws.”

The ministers grievances stem from the fact that Facebook are saving details of people who not have a Facebook account and have no idea there data is being stored.

For example: Let’s say you don’t have a Facebook account, but I do.

I know you & I have your phone number and email address stored in my phone address book.

I decide to sync my phone with my Facebook account and immediately Facebook have access to your phone & email and can therefore being segmenting you & using you for their marketing. For example, using your phone number to provide stats on the reach of their marketing or the TLD (top level domain, that is .com, .co.uk, .de etc.) to make informed guesses about all kinds of marketing campaigns (and basically anything else they wish to use the data for).

All of this, without you ever being aware that your details are stored somewhere – since you haven’t given anyone permission to use them.

Is she right?

My personal opinion is, yes.

This is essentially no different from someone walking up to you in the street and informing you that they know you through ‘Joe Bloggs’ and they also know your phone number and email address (and don’t forget, any other details ‘Joe Bloggs’ may have stored on their phone about you [possibly even a picture]).

In this instance I’m sure you’d feel pretty violated and shocked (once you’d gotten over the weirdness of the situation) and absolutely rightly so.

Why should Facebook be allowed to get away with this, simply because they’re a large company.