Headline December 02, 2018/ '' 'FACEBOOK'S WOES : *EUROPEAN*' ''

'' 'FACEBOOK'S WOES : *EUROPEAN*' ''

THE EUROPEAN UNION'S STRICT 'privacy laws' is starting to really bite the social network.......

REGULATION helps incumbents, which have the resources to comply, but hurts newcomers. Or so argues critics of  the  European Commission's new rules for the digital realm and of its privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR].

That may yet prove true, although the the GDPR  makes exceptions for smaller firms. But for now these new laws are making life harder for big technology firms. Facebook, in particular, is in the cross-hairs of European Regulators as never before.

The latest example came on September 28th, when Facebook announced that an attack on its system had exposed the personal information of 50 million users - the biggest data breach in the firms's 14-year history.

Hackers had exploited three separate bugs in its software to extract snippets of code {''access tokens''}, which let them take control of accounts and even log into other online services  that accept these digital keys [although Facebook says that it has found ''no evidence '' that they actually used them to do this].

The company notified the European regulators of the breach in order to comply with the GDPR.

For the first time in a big case, regulators will have to decide whether Facebook did this within 72 hours of an attack being discovered, as the law demands. If it did not, it faces the threat of penalty of 2% annual revenue, or $813 million.

The fine could be even bigger-up to 4% of revenue - if the officials find that the firm had not done enough to avoid the breach. The Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where the firm's European headquarters are based, has launched an investigation.

Facebook had already started to feel the force of the GDPR, which went into effect in May.

Last month, Vera Jourova, the European Union's Commissioner for justice and consumers, warned that it needed to amend its ''misleading'' terms of service to make clearer how it uses  personal data -or face sanctions.

And Max Screms, a  privacy activist who has successfully challenged the firm in court before, has lodged complaints alleging that Facebook forces users to consent to their data being processed, which the GDPR does not allow.

Privacy is not the only issue getting Facebook into trouble in Europe. Antitrust regulators are interested in the firm's practices.

Germany's Federal Cartel Office will probably decide later this year whether to take action against Facebook after finding in December that it had abused its market dominance to gather personal data.

And the European Commission is likely to look much more closely at the firm's next big acquisition, should it make one.

In an interview on September 26th Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, a popular messaging app that Facebook bought for $19 billion in 2014, confirmed that the new owner had always planned to merge data from both services - despite having told regulators at the time that this would be technically too difficult.

The fine for this breach had already been levied by the commission last year - $122 million for  giving ''incorrect or misleading information''.

All these cases suggest that Facebook will face more constraints. Its user growth is already slowing. And alternatives may yet emerge.

On September 30th Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of  the World Wide Web, announced a new startup, Inrupt, which lets users store their information in personal ''data pods'' and control who had access to them.

It could, he hopes, restore the balance of power between firms that process personal data and the people who provide them.

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