The Vienna Regional Court for Civil Matters has reached a
verdict in the data protection trial between activist Max Schrems
and social media platform Facebook. The ruling follows oral
hearings held in the Austrian capital earlier this year, which saw
Facebook's European privacy director, Ceilia Alvarez, facing
questions centring on:
- The corporation's ability to obtain consent from its
users;
- Its compliance with data requests by those active on the
networking site; and
- Clarification of the terminology 'deletion of data' and
its meaning in practice.
The judgment delivered on 30 June 2020, establishes that
although Facebook is required to pay damages of EUR 500 for
violating its disclosure obligations regarding the use of the
Plaintiff's personal data, the networking service is deemed to
have acted in a contractually or legally complicit manner as to the
processing of the Plaintiff's data.
