The big data fuss seem to have trickled down to social media in a rather peculiar fashion. Social media networks, Facebook in particular, have faced a fair share of public scrutiny in the past year or so as users and legislators became wary about the way their data is collected, stored and used by advertisers leveraging the largest communications medium in the world.

The latest development is that a European Commission directive will be presented to the European Union in May, seeking to ban targeted advertising unless the user agrees to it. The main complicating the EU may face is that the majority of data collected about Facebook’s users, whether European or not, is stored in the U.S. Viviane Reding, the vice president of European Commission addressed this potential issue in the directive:

“Consumers in Europe should see their data strongly protected, regardless of the EU country they live in and regardless of the country in which companies which process their personal data are established.”

Facebook will be facing legal action should the new legislature pass through, as well as a potential decline of its main source of revenue: online ads. Shareholder concerns will likely show up during the company’s next IPO in that case.

Just as interesting as this latest news is that Facebook–or perhaps more accurately privacy advocates–seem be very persistent when it comes to stirring up buzz around the safety of one’s personal data.

Back in September hacker and blogger Nik Cubrilovic highlighted some new security gaps he thinks Facebook users should be aware of. This was just a month after the German officials deemed Facebook’s facial recognition feature as illegal, and some earlier debate regarding French’s personal data storage law dating back to April.