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FORT Persuades Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court to Permit Use of Facebook Data for Assessments of Creditworthiness

Lithuania
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Fort has announced that it represented UAB Creditinfo Lietuva in an administrative case heard by the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania, in which the Court decided that the data published by users of the Facebook social network may be used for assessing their creditworthiness.

According to Fort, “this new precedent now enables the business community to process Big Data for providing various innovative services, subject to user’s consent."

Fort explains that, “the processing of Facebook or other social network data is the de facto worldwide standard for the provision of innovative electronical services. Before this case the scope of data that may be used for the assessment of creditworthiness was not clear in Lithuania. This legal uncertainty allowed the supervising institutions to interpret the innovative business practices differently. Some had adopted the position that Art. 21 and Art. 22 of the Law on Legal Protection of Personal Data of the Republic of Lithuania provided an exhaustive list of data that may be processed for financial services, even if the user himself wishes to include more data. The Court recognized that the Law on Legal Protection of Personal Data does not provide an exhaustive list of data that can be processed in order to assess creditworthiness. This significant precedent enables data processing for innovative businesses, limits undue interference by public state institutions and protects the user’s freedom to decide on the scope and purpose of their data online."

The Fort team representing Creditinfo Lietuva consisted of attorneys at law Mindaugas Kiskis and Gytis Kuncevicius and lawyer Aiste Samuilyte-Mamontove.