The Guarantor for the protection of personal data has established that a Facebook service active during the political elections of March 2018 has implemented an illegitimate processing of the personal data of some users. This is the “Candidates” service, which made it possible to obtain information on the candidates of one's own constituency. In his newsletter of February 7, the Guarantor explained that the service “while stating that it did not record information on how users had oriented themselves on these profiles, kept the log files of their actions for a period of 90 days, and then extracted them” aggregate matrices 'not better defined' and later invited users to say if they had gone to vote. These were, explained the Guarantor, “purposes indicated in the” data policy “of the platform”.
Also according to the Guarantor, the processing of the data of those users is to be considered illegitimate “as it is based on a generic consent given by the user when registering on the platform after reading a completely unsuitable information”. The Guarantor is therefore considering administrative sanctions against Facebook and has prohibited the use in any other way of the data collected through “Candidates”.
A Facebook spokesperson said the service was “designed to foster the involvement of people in elections and raise awareness of local parties and candidates” and “was made with a broad involvement of civil society and also contained the official video tutorial on new voting methods, carried out by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and by the Ministry of the Interior “.
