Privacy watchdog: Facebook must allow pseudonyms

Facebook must allow German users to create and use an account under a pseudonym. A German privacy watchdog announced this on Tuesday, various media reported.

According to the regulator, the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Information Freedom, Facebook may not unilaterally change the pseudonyms into real names. In addition, the American company is not allowed to refuse users who do not want to say their name. Bloomberg writes that, among other things.

The German watchdog is lashing out at Facebook over a complaint from a woman who says Facebook changed her pseudonym to her real name against her will and asked her for ID. This while the independent entrepreneur wanted to keep her name private, because people were looking for her for business.

Facebook has a verification policy, which means that the company tries to find out who is behind a certain pseudonym via membership cards, library cards and emails. Using real names is the foundation of Facebook, as it allows the site to build more personal profiles, which is valuable to advertisers. This just didn’t always work out well in the past.

Facebook has been under fire for some time because of whether or not to block pseudonyms. In 2013, another German privacy watchdog, from another state, sued the social networking site for countering the use of pseudonyms. However, a judge then held Facebook not liable, because German law would not apply to the company, which has its European headquarters in Ireland.

According to the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Information Freedom, European rules have changed in recent years in such a way as to challenge Facebook again for its pseudonym policy. For several years now, the European Union has been focusing more on the privacy of its inhabitants, which has resulted, among other things, in the ‘right to be forgotten’.