Germany Goes After Facebook Over Privacy Law

Facebook faces legal action in Germany over the nation's strict privacy laws, Monsters and Critics reports. A privacy commissioner has charged that the site's "Friend Finder" breaks German law. The software looks at the address books of users and sends emails to friends asking them to join Facebook. That function breaks German bans on firms collecting information on non-clients and using it for marketing, he says.

"We consider the capture of data from third parties in this fashion impermissible under data-protection laws," said the commissioner, Johannes Caspar. "We want to demonstrate that German data protection law also applies to foreign firms that have users in Germany." He has given Facebook until Aug. 11 to reply.