The Belgian court on Monday said that Facebook does indeed use a special cookie that visitors pick up if they visit a friend’s page on Facebook or any other page on the web with Facebook like or share code in it – all without the visitor having ever signed up for a Facebook account.
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The commission subsequently “focused on the fact that we set the datr cookie when someone visits one of our sites, such as Facebook.com, or clicks a Like button on a publisher’s website and interacts with the login page that appears”, according to Stamos, who added that the company does not set the datr cookie “when someone simply loads a page with a Like button”. If the court ends up blocking the datr cookie, it will limit Facebook’s assurance that users are going into the website legitimately. Experts assisting the Belgian Privacy Commission on Facebook tracking through social plug-ins noted that Facebook could “link the browsing behavior of its users to their real world identities, social network interactions, offline purchases, and highly sensitive data such as medical information, religion, and sexual and political preferences”.
He said: “Most significantly, we use the Datr cookie to help differentiate legitimate visits to our website from illegitimate ones”.
“We will appeal the decision and are working to minimise any disruption to people’s access to Facebook in Belgium”, a Facebook spokeswoman was quoted as saying.
Facebook faces a steep daily fine after a Belgian court ruled it must stop storing data from people who don’t have a Facebook account, reports The Guaridan.
The court said that Facebook was required to obtain consent to collect the information being gathered by its “datr” tracking cookie. Roughly 80 percent of Facebook’s 1.4 billion users outside North America are managed through its Irish base.
Facebook will appeal the ruling, the company said in a statement.
Returning to the Belgian data protection case, Facebook has since sought to argue its tracking cookies are an important security measure for users of the site – albeit it has not provided any public comment on how it is proportionate for an online service to systematically track non-users even for, ostensibly, security purposes.
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European data protection authorities recently demanded that Europe and the United States agree to a strengthened trans-Atlantic data transfer deal by early next year. American and European Union officials are trying to negotiate a new pact.
