PRIVACY: Germany threatens curbs on Facebook’s data use.

Andreas Mundt, head of Germany’s main antitrust agency, the Federal Cartel Office, said Facebook could be banned from collecting and processing third-party user data as one possible outcome of an investigation that in December concluded the US technology group was abusing its dominant market position.

“We are blazing a trail in this case,” Mr Mundt said in an interview. “We are looking very closely at the connection between data and market dominance, data and market power, and the possible abuse of data collection.”

The German probe goes to the heart of the way Facebook makes money from the personal data of its 2bn users and reflects growing disquiet in Europe about the influence of the big US technology groups.

Probably the only way to maintain even a modicum of privacy with Facebook is to avoid their mobile apps altogether, and visit their website in browser in a virtual machine where you do absolutely zero other activity.