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Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Facebook will appeal a German ruling Thursday that said the social network used its market dominance to collect, merge and use data from users without their knowledge or permission. The watchdog agency, the Bundeskartellamt, said Facebook abused its popularity by forcing people to accept its terms as a condition to use the social platform, and it assigned data from Facebook apps like WhatsApp and Instagram to accounts without users' consent.
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"In [the] future, Facebook will no longer be allowed to force its users to agree to the practically unrestricted collection and assigning of non-Facebook data to their Facebook user accounts," Bundeskartellamt President Andreas Mundt said in a statement.
"In future, consumers can prevent Facebook from unrestrictedly collecting and using their data. The previous practice of combining all data in a Facebook user account, practically without any restriction, will now be subject to the voluntary consent given by the users," Mundt added.
The watchdog said Facebook's 1.5 billion daily and 2.3 billion monthly users made it the dominant social media platform in the marketplace -- including Germany, which has 23 million daily user.
Yvonne Cunnane, Facebook Ireland head of data protection and company attorney Nikhil Shanbhag argued in a blog posting Thursday the Bundeskartellamt misapplied Germany's competition law to single out Facebook.
"While we've cooperated with the Bundeskartellamt for nearly three years and will continue our discussions, we disagree with their conclusions and intend to appeal so that people in Germany continue to benefit fully from all our services," Cunnane and Shanbhag said in a statement.
"The Bundeskartellamt underestimates the fierce competition we face in Germany, misinterprets our compliance with [general data protection regulation] and undermines the mechanisms European law provides for ensuring consistent data protection standards across the [European Union]."
