Meta faces potential damage claims from thousands of German users after losing a pivotal ruling from Germany’s highest court regarding a 2021 data breach that impacted 500 million people worldwide.
On Monday, the Federal Court of Justice, Germany’s top civil court, issued a landmark decision that lowers the burden of proof for Facebook users seeking compensation for data misuse.
In a press release, the court clarified that demonstrating that individuals were victims of a data breach was enough, emphasizing that they did not need to prove they had suffered harm in any specific way.
The judges overturned a lower court ruling in Meta’s favor, concluding that compensation for loss of control over personal data could likely amount to approximately 100 euros ($106) per affected user.
Following this decision, the Cologne court must now proceed with the lawsuit under these revised guidelines.
The lawsuits in Germany stem from a massive 2021 data breach that exposed the personal information of 533 million Facebook users, including phone numbers and email addresses, on hacker websites.
Hackers accessed this data by exploiting Facebook’s contact import feature in 2018 and 2019, entering random phone numbers to retrieve associated account details.
In response to the breach, the Irish Data Protection Commission, Meta’s primary privacy regulator within the European Union, fined the company 265 million euros ($280 million) for failing to implement adequate security measures.
Meta has disputed the German Supreme Court’s ruling, arguing that it does not align with the EU Court of Justice case law. The company expressed confidence that it would prevail again in lower courts, maintaining that Facebook’s system was not hacked and no data breach occurred.
This German court decision is expected to influence thousands of pending lawsuits in the United States.
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