Facebook has been accused of breaking the law by tracking the web activity of all of its users, both past and present, even if they’ve deactivated their account with the site.
Extensive research performed on behalf of the Belgian Privacy Commission has revealed that the social networking site places tracking cookies on a user’s computer every time they visit a site linked with the Facebook.com domain, even if a Facebook account is not required to access these sites.
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The cookies can be found on sites which make use of the company’s social plug-ins, such as the omnipresent “Like” buttons you find on pretty much all online articles, even if the user doesn’t interact with the Like button or any other feature related to Facebook. This is obviously an immense abuse of users’ privacy, with it also meaning that the company is currently breaching European law.
The study was carried out by researchers at the Centre of Interdisciplinary Law and ICT (ICRI) and the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography department (Cosic), with the results likely leading to an overhaul of Facebook’s privacy policy and their use of cookies when it comes to the plug-ins the company provides to third-party websites.
Facebook places an identifying cookie which can be used to track users for the next two years.
When viewing a website, you’ll typically be prompted by a notification informing you that the site places cookies on your computer. This is a legal requirement, though Facebook doesn’t abide by those rules when it comes to the implementation of their social plug-ins, with users not being informed that the site is placing cookies that will monitor their web activity. Facebook currently insists that users who do not want to be tracked need to refer themselves to an external company such as the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US, Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada in Canada or the European Digital Advertising Alliance in the EU, though ICRI researcher Brendan Van Alsenoy said Facebook “cannot rely on users’ inaction (ie not opting out through a third-party website) to infer consent.”
However, it seems that even users who choose to opt out of being tracked by Facebook will still see their web activity being monitored, with the research revealing that “if people who are not being tracked by Facebook use the ‘opt out’ mechanism proposed for the EU, Facebook places a long-term, uniquely identifying cookie, which can be used to track them for the next two years.”
This is huge news regarding Facebook’s complete lack of concern for its users’ privacy, and we hope that the company addresses these major concerns sooner rather than later.
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