Prepared by Cislo & Thomas LLP Attorney Travers Morgan, Esq..
Takeaway: If you embed social media links on your website, you should request permission from those visitors to send their personal information to the social media site.
If your business embeds social icons such as the Facebook like button on your website you will need to implement a protocol for informing consumers that their personal information is being shared with Facebook.
Under European Union data protection laws, Europe’s highest court ruled that any business that implements the Facebook like button on its website must inform consumers and ask for their consent to collect their personal information and send it to Facebook.
When you embed a Facebook like button on your website, there is a transmission of a visitor’s personal information that is sent to Facebook, whether or not the user actually clicks the like button or is even a member of Facebook. For this reason, the court found that there was a need for the websites to request consent from visitors to send their personal information to Facebook. Even though this ruling was Facebook specific, it is likely good practice to obtain consent for any social media link that is embedded in your website because most social media icons are structured in a similar manner.
