Websites with like button are jointly liable for data collection and forwarding

The website operator who places a third-party plug-in on his site with which personal data of the visitor is collected and forwarded is jointly responsible for this. That is the opinion of the highest EU court.

With this judgment, the Court of Justice follows the earlier advice of Michal Bobek, the Advocate General at the Court. From now on, websites will in principle have to request prior permission from visitors before they can collect data via a plug-in such as the Facebook like button and forward it to the company behind the plug-in. In addition, the administrator is obliged to provide the visitor with a certain amount of information, so that it becomes clear to the visitor that, for example, data is shared with Facebook in the case of a like button. The administrator of the website is only liable for the collection of data and the forwarding thereof, because he alone has influence on this; what, for example, Facebook does afterwards with that data is beyond its control and it is therefore not responsible for that.

This case arose after a German consumer organization instituted an injunction against Fashion ID, a German online store that trades in fashion items. The website uses the Facebook like button, which automatically sends information about the IP address and other data to Facebook when an internet user visits. This happens regardless of whether the like button is actually clicked. The German consumer organization was not happy with that and went to court. The organization believes that the website with the Facebook plugin violates the General Data Protection Regulation.

This is therefore originally about a German lawsuit, in which the highest court of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia referred the case to the EU Court. This mainly concerned the interpretation of a number of provisions of the former 1995 Data Protection Directive, the predecessor of the current General Data Protection Regulation. This German court will now have to rule on the German case, but the judgment of the Court of Justice will also have consequences for other sites that integrate plugins such as the like button.