Berlin – A Berlin court on Wednesday upheld an appeal by social networking site Facebook against the parents of a dead teenaged girl who wanted to gain access to her Facebook account.
The Superior Court of Justice based its ruling on the privacy of telecommunications and did not address the issue of whether Facebook accounts could be inherited.
The parents said Wednesday through their lawyers that they were “deeply disappointed” by the decision and are considering whether to appeal the decision in the Federal Supreme Court.
Facebook launched an appeal last month to deny the teen’s mother access to her account as part of a bid to shed light on the circumstances surrounding the 15-year-old’s death five years ago.
The US social network asked the court to overturn a regional court ruling that granted the mother access to her daughter’s Facebook entries, arguing that the teen’s Facebook user contract was part of her estate.
The regional court also said that Facebook entries and emails should not be treated any differently to letters or diaries irrespective of their contents.
Under German privacy rules, the names of those involved in court action are normally not published.
The girl was killed by moving train in a Berlin underground station in 2012, and her parents wanted access to her Facebook entries with the hope of gaining insight into her death, which could have been a suicide.
Facebook had argued that giving the parents access to their daughter’s account could infringe on the rights of others who had been in contact with her and assumed that the contents of their messages would remain private.
-dpa
