BERLIN (Reuters) - German Justice Minister Katarina Barley on Thursday welcomed a crackdown by Germany’s antitrust watchdog on Facebook’s data collection practices, saying the company was collecting data far beyond its platform.

Germany’s Federal Cartel Office ruled that the world’s largest social network abused its market dominance to gather information about users without their knowledge or consent.

“Users are often unaware of this flow of data and cannot prevent it if they want to use the services,” Barley told Reuters. “We need to be rigorous in tackling the abuse of power that comes with data.”