Belgium gives Facebook 48 hours to stop tracking non-users or pay ?250K per day

[wehateporn]

A Belgian court has given Facebook 48 hours to stop tracking the online activities of non-Facebook users in Belgium unless they have their explicit consent or face a daily fine of ?250,000. The internet giant has pledged to appeal the decision.

?If a surfer doesn?t have an own Facebook account, Facebook from now on will have to explicitly solicit consent and provide the needed explanations,? the Brussels court of first instance said.

Monday?s ruling follows a months-long suit that started in June when Belgium?s data protection regulator accused Facebook of violating EU privacy law by tracking people without their consent using the so-called ?datr? cookie. The tracking cookie was placed on an internet user?s system when they visited a Facebook.com site or ?Liked? a page on other websites. This allows Facebook to monitor the user?s browsing habits in order to better target advertising to them.

The Brussels court ordered the Silicon Valley company to stop their tracking activities in Belgium within 48 hours or pay a daily fine of up to ?250,000.

?Facebook cannot follow people on the internet who are not members of Facebook which is very logical because they cannot have given permission to follow them,? said Margot Neyskens, spokeswoman for Bart Tommelein, Belgian secretary of state for the protection of privacy, in an emailed statement.

Continued https://www.rt.com/news/321373-faceb...ourt-tracking/

[Paul&John]

Hm if a Belgian court ruled so, then this shouldn't be implemented through EU?

[Black All Through]

Funny, I just read about it on Twitter. This could be a chain reaction for all EU countries and to be honest I stand by the Belgium government, I mean if I'm not even a member of Facebook, why should you stick on my computer a 5 year cookie? This however should apply not only for social media websites...

[clickity click]

How can they like a page if they are not on Facebook?

[robwod]

Originally Posted by wehateporn

?Facebook cannot follow people on the internet who are not members of Facebook which is very logical because they cannot have given permission to follow them,? said Margot Neyskens, spokeswoman for Bart Tommelein, Belgian secretary of state for the protection of privacy, in an emailed statement.

By that logic, could an argument not be made for things like Google Analytics? Even if you're not a "member" of Google, you are still tracked and cookied by anyone who uses GA on their sites, without getting explicit permission. Similarly for advertising companies -- many sites you visit on a day-to-day basis that serve ads from 3rd parties also cookie/profile you, including Google Ads.

It'll be interesting to see what happens here.

[MikeAMS]

" In 2014, the social network's revenue amounted to 12.47 billion."

That's around 32 mio per day, they must be really scared for that 250.000 eur