Germany: “Remove Facebook Like”!

remove like facebook The data protection agencies for the German state Schleswig-Holtstein ordered Facebook today (8/19/2011) to remove the LIKE BUTTON („Gefällt mir“-Button) from its websites citing the violation of three different consumer protection laws.

Schleswig-Holstein’s data-protection commissioner, Thilo Wechert, says that an analysis from his office shows that Facebook builds profiles of both users and non-users with data collected by the Like button, this would violate German and European data protection laws. Facebook faces fines of EURO 50,000 per violation if the LIKE buttons are not removed by the end of September.

My first gig (while still in law school) was to teach these laws to call centers of ISPs and Telecommunication companies. Ah .. the memories 😉