Meta is expected to compensate half a million users at €100 per person

Meta (formerly Facebook) may be required by the Federal Court in Germany to compensate thousands of users in the country for 100 euros each, according to the Bloomberg news agency.

These are compensations that will be given due to the leak of private information of about half a million Facebook accounts in 2021. At the time, the leak allowed a group of hackers to publish the information of 533 million users in Germany and other countries.

In a ruling that was called “groundbreaking”, the Federal Court of Justice, Germany’s highest court for civil matters, eased the standard of proof for Facebook users seeking compensation for data theft.

From now on, it will be enough to show that they were victims of the leak, without proving that they suffered in any way. This is about overturning a decision of a lower court, and easing the demand for compensation for the leak, which included phone numbers and email addresses.

Bloomberg mentions that two years ago, the Irish Data Protection Commission imposed a fine of 265 million euros on the company after it did not implement “adequate safeguards” to maintain privacy.

Bamata said that the ruling does not comply with the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the highest court in the Union, and added that they are sure that the latter will accept their expected appeal, claiming that Facebook’s systems were not hacked and there was no data breach.

This is another blow to the company, after last week Meta was charged with a heavy fine by the European Commission, the executive authority of the Union, which ordered it to pay 797.72 million euros, following “anti-competitive practices” used on the Marketplace platform. At the time, Meta said in a statement that it would appeal the decision, adding that the European Union had presented no evidence of harm to competitors or consumers.