Facebook violates data protection law, German court says Ruling comes as Italy’s competition authority threatens Facebook with a second €5 million fine.

A German court has ruled that Facebook’s privacy settings violate consumer and data protection law.

The ruling, which was published Friday, chastised Facebook for tracking location in its mobile app and for sharing a link to the users’ profile with search engines, both by default.

The Berlin state court's ruling cannot be appealed, although it is expected that both Facebook and the Germany’s main consumer protection organization, which brought the claim, will appeal against their inability to appeal.

A spokesperson for the consumer organization said they had an interest in appealing the decision so that the case could be analysed by a higher court, thus lending it more weight.

But the court said that Facebook’s erstwhile marketing claims that it is free “and always will be” did not contravene consumer or privacy standards. The consumer protection organization had argued that the claim was misleading since consumers pay indirectly with their data.

The ruling comes as Italy’s competition authority threatens Facebook with a second €5 million fine for failing to comply with an earlier order from the authority criticizing the social media company’s failure to inform users that their data is used for commercial reasons.