Belgium Court Ordered Facebook To Stop Collecting Data
Just less than a month ago, Facebook announced changes to its News Feed and relinquished its privacy controls to users. Facebook ran into a hurdle on Friday over a privacy case and a Belgium court threatened to fine the company in the amount of $125 million.
The court made it clear that if it continued to track people on a third-party website, it had no regard for existing privacy laws.
The case was brought forward by a Belgium privacy watchdog. According to Reuters, the court ruled for Facebook to delete all data it had collected from citizens in the country. In addition, these Belgium citizens were not users of Facebook in the first place.
The world’s largest social network has been in an ongoing legal battle for some time in Europe. If the court decides to administer the fine, Facebook will try to contest the ruling.
“Facebook, which will be fined 250,000 euros a day or up to 100 million euros if it does not comply with the court’s judgment, said in a statement it would appeal the ruling.”
The court said in a statement that Facebook insufficiently informed them with regards to data collection. Specifically, what kind of data was collected, what it did with it, and for what period of time the information was stored.
#UPDATE Belgium's privacy watchdog had filed a complaint over Facebook's tracking of internet users when they visit pages on the site or click "like" or "share", even if they were not membershttps://t.co/vFA2GF4Jon
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) February 16, 2018
This court case made public just how the social network goes about tracking users. As stated by the court, Facebook utilizes different methods to track online behavior when users are not on the platform’s website. It is able to do this through cookies and invisible pixels on third-party websites.
To counter the findings, Facebook justified this technology to be in line with industry standards. In addition, it gives users the right to opt out of data collection from websites and applications off the social platform.
https://www.facebook.com/ABCNews/posts/10156919687923812
“We’ll comply with this new law, just as we’ve complied with existing data protection law in Europe,” said Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice president of public policy for Europe, Middle East Africa.”
This Belgium vs. Facebook battle is not a recent occurrence. In fact, the showdown dates back to the year 2015. The Guardian confirmed the CPP commissioned a report by researchers from the University of Leuven and found Facebook to be non-compliant because it was tracking all visitors.
“The CPP, which does not have powers to directly penalise companies, took Facebook to court later that year for its alleged ‘trampling’ over Belgian and EU privacy law after failing to come to an agreement with the social network following the report’s findings.”
The battles are far from over for Facebook. As the British daily article pointed out, it seems the political winds in Europe have recently turned against large technology firms.
