Thursday , November 7 2024

Belgian court orders Facebook to stop tracking web users

Facebook’s Zuckerburg

“This is a big win for internet users who don’t want tech companies to monitor every step they make online,” BEUC spokesman Johannes Kleis said in a statement.

“What Facebook is doing is against Europe’s data protection laws and should be stopped throughout the EU,” Kleis added.

– ‘Intend to appeal’ –

“We are disappointed with today’s verdict and intend to appeal,” Facebook said in a statement.

“Over recent years we have worked hard to help people understand how we use cookies to keep Facebook secure and show them relevant content,” it added.

“We’ve built teams of people who focus on the protection of privacy — from engineers to designers — and tools that give people choice and control,” it said.

It said the cookies and pixels it uses are “industry standard technologies,” allowing hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow and reach customers across the bloc.

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Facebook, it said, requires any business using its technologies to give “clear notice to end-users”.

People, it added, also have the right not to have data collected on sites and apps off Facebook being used for ads.

Facebook said it was making preparations for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — a new EU law designed to protect privacy online — to come into force on May 25.

“We’ll comply with this new law, just as we’ve complied with existing data protection law in Europe,” Facebook said.

A consumer rights organisation said Monday that a German court had found Facebook is breaching data protection rules with privacy settings that over-share by default and by requiring users to give real names.

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