Facebook 'saving personal data' of non-members

Facebook has been accused in Germany of illegally accessing and saving personal data of people who do not use the social networking website.

Data protection official Johannes Caspar, from Hamburg, has begun legal steps that could result in Facebook being fined tens of thousands of euros for saving information on people who have not granted it access to their private details.

"We consider the saving of data from third parties, in this context, to be against data privacy laws," Mr Caspar said.

Facebook has until August 11 to respond formally to the legal complaint against it. Its response will determine whether the case goes further.

Germany, which has some of the world's strictest privacy laws, is also investigating Google over its Street View photo-mapping programme.

In April Facebook changed its privacy settings to allow users to block access to the contacts listed in their email, but Mr Caspar argues that the previously saved contacts have not been erased and are being used for marketing purposes.

"It is a system that is designed around making it possible for Facebook to expand, for its own benefit," he said.

"Given that several million people in Germany alone are members, this is a very unsettling notion."

Germany's consumer protection minister, Ilse Aigner, said last month that she planned to give up her Facebook account, arguing that it still wasn't doing enough to protect users' data.