Overview

• A data scraping incident exposed personal information of 533 million Facebook users worldwide, including six million in Germany, in 2021.
• The Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (vzbv) has filed a collective Musterfeststellungsklage against Meta at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg.
• German users can register for free in the Federal Office of Justice's Klageregister to join the lawsuit and preserve their claims without risk of expiration.
• The Bundesgerichtshof ruled in November 2024 that victims can claim damages for loss of data control without proving specific harm or misuse.
• Meta continues to deny liability, arguing that Facebook systems were not hacked and no GDPR violation occurred.