Facebook is known to be under threat from European complaints over its role in US surveillance. The largest social network this week received another blow when a Belgian report on the protection of privacy reported that it violates European laws.
After that, the company for the first time admitted that it had collected data from users who were not registered on Facebook through the web pages that have the Like button incorporated (and who does not). However, the greedy social network reports that the collection of this data was due to a bug.
This week, the company responded to the final report produced by the Belgian Commission for Personal Data Protection, which examined an update Facebook last year's data usage policy.
The report from Belgium claims that Facebok's tracking methods violate the terms of European law contracts. The report also states that there is no opt-out mechanism that stops behavioral advertising and allows users to give the legally valid consent their.
Facebook initially responded by saying the report contained "inaccuracies" and that the researchers they were never contacted to discuss these claims.
“Η έκθεση ισχυρίζεται λάθος πολλές φορές πως το Facebοok χρησιμοποιεί τις πληροφορίες από την παροχή των υπηρεσιών μας σε περισσότερους από ένα δισεκατομμύριο ανθρώπους σε όλο τον κόσμο”, δήλωσε ο αντιπρόεδρος της πολιτικής για την Ευρώπη του Facebook, Richard Allan on the social network, this week.
One of the report's most controversial claims is that Facebook uses the Like button embedded on third-party websites to track everyone online, even those who aren't registered with the social network. According to the report, this is done with a specialist cookie called 'datr' and served to non-users.
According to Facebook, what the researchers discovered was actually a bug.
"Our practice is not to place cookies in programs tourof people who have visited websites with Social Plugins, but who have never visited Facebook.com”, said Allan.
"Researchers have identified a few cases where cookies were served, but we were beginning to experience these inadvertent cases as soon as they came to our notice."
The conclusion is yours to make….
