No right to immediate deletion of IP addresses

Customers of Deutsche Telekom AG cannot demand that IP addresses assigned when accessing the internet are deleted immediately after the connection is terminated. As a rule, Telekom AG must carry out the deletion only after seven days.

A Telekom customer had concluded a so-called "T-Online DSL Flat-Tarif" with the company years ago. He demands that the company delete the dynamic IP addresses automatically assigned to him for internet use immediately after the connection is terminated. Deutsche Telekom AG stored the customer's data for 80 days at that time.

The first instance granted the claim to the extent that it prohibited Telekom from storing the data for longer than seven days, whereupon the telecommunications giant reduced the storage time of the connection data to seven days. However, this did not go far enough for the Telekom customer, so he filed an appeal against the judgment.

Court decision

The Higher Regional Court Frankfurt a.M. (OLG) decided in its judgment on appeal of 28.8.2013 (Az. 13 U 105/07) that Telekom AG may continue to store the connection data for seven days.

The Telecommunications Act allows providers of telecommunications services to collect and use master data and traffic data to identify, limit or eliminate faults or defects in telecommunications systems to the extent required. In view of an expert opinion commissioned by the Higher Regional Court (OLG), which had established that Telekom AG receives more than 500,000 reports of abuse cases on the internet per month, the storage of the data is necessary and permissible.

Conclusion

The storage of IP addresses by Telekom remains – at least for the period of one week – permissible. With more than 500,000 abuse reports to Telekom per month and thus over six million reports per year, most of which are likely to be based on violations in file-sharing cases, this decision of the Higher Regional Court Frankfurt a.M. (OLG) is not surprising.