On November 29, 2018, the Italian Antitrust Authority (Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato “AGCM”) found that Facebook committed two violations of the Italian Consumer Code and fined the it EUR 5 million for each violation. Facebook mislead consumers in registering to Facebook -in violation of articles 21 and 22 of the Italian Consumer Code – by not adequately informing them at the time of registration that their data would be used for commercial purposes.
In addition, the AGCM found that Facebook – in violation of Articles 24 and 25 of the Consumer Code – carried out an aggressive practice by unduly influencing registered users, whose data were transmitted for commercial purposes to third parties without their express and prior consent.
With reference to its jurisdiction, the AGCM found the Italian Consumer Code applicable to the examined practices since Facebook users’ data — used for profiling users for commercial and marketing purposes – has “an economic value suitable to configure a consumer relationship among the professional and the user … even in the absence of a monetary consideration.”
Provvedimento n. 27431, PS11112, Facebook-condivisione dati con terzi, is availble at http://www.agcm.it…
Originally published on Technethics on December 2018