Facebook Ordered by Hamburg Regulator to Allow Pseudonyms.
BRUSSELS (By Julia Fioretti, Reuters) – Facebook may not prevent its users from using fake names, a German privacy watchdog said on Tuesday, in the latest privacy setback for the U.S. company in Europe. A woman in Germany complained to a privacy watchdog about Facebook blocking her account for just that and the regulator ordered the Silicon Valley tech giant to allow users to use nicknames, Reuters is reporting. The Hamburg data protection authority, which is responsible for policing Facebook in Germany, said the social network firm could not unilaterally change users’ chosen usernames to their real names, nor could it ask them for official ID. The company, whose European headquarters are in Ireland, can’t argue it’s only subject to that country’s law, he said. “Anyone who stands on our pitch also has to play our game,” said Caspar. “The arbitrary change of the user name blatantly violates” privacy rights.
The decision stemmed from the case of a woman who had used a fake name on her private Facebook account to prevent people from contacting her on business matters. The German choose comes with the Belgian level of privacy regulator carried Facebook to legal procedure in June within the method it path the pursuits from the clients. But Johannes Caspar, Hamburg’s data regulator, said in an email statement to news services that the company is now subject to German law due to a ruling last year by Europe’s top court about Google’s search engine results: In the U.S., Facebook has been embroiled in controversy over its name policy, with drag queens, transgender activists and domestic violence victims arguing the firm’s rules put them in danger. In an audit in December 2011 the Irish privacy watchdog concluded that Facebook’s authentic name policy did not contravene Irish law and its reasons for the policy, such as child safety and the prevention of online harassment, were justified.
Germany has now said that Facebook cannot arbitrarily switch accounts to a real name or block accounts that are not using their real name, since that violates German privacy laws. The decision only marks the latest setback for Facebook in Europe, where a Belgian privacy watchdog took the website to court just last month over the manner it tracks users’ activities. The employee setting up the account may not want the company’s Facebook page associated with their personal profile, and the company may not want to relinquish control of its business page to an employee.
However, it is unclear exactly how that works when the company also requests many users to send a copy of their government-issued identification to prove their identity.