Facebook must stop collecting user data, Belgian court rules

Facebook seems to be in trouble again as its legal battle with the Belgian commission for the protection of privacy (CPP) continues. A Belgian court has ordered the company to stop collecting personal data of users or face daily fines of €250,000 a day, or up to €100m. The court on Friday ruled that the social network giant had broken privacy laws by tracking its users on third-party sites.

"Facebook informs us insufficiently about gathering information about us, the kind of data it collects, what it does with that data and how long it stores it," said the court. "It also does not gain our consent to collect and store all this information," the court added.

The court has also ordered Facebook to delete all data it had collected illegally on citizens of Belgium, including those who didn't use the social network.

Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg's company uses various methods for tracking the online behavior of people even if they are not the social media platform. The company places cookies and invisible pixels on third party websites to do so, said the court.

Richard Allan, Facebook's vice president of public policy for EMEA, stated that the company was not happy with the verdict and wanted to appeal. "The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU.

"We require any business that uses our technologies to provide clear notice to end-users, and we give people the right to opt-out of having data collected on sites and apps off Facebook being used for ads," Allan added.

The legal battle between Facebook and Belgium first started back in 2015. The CPP commissioned a report which found that the social network is tracking of all visitors without explicit consent using cookies, and it breached EU law. Since it is not within CPP's power to directly penalize organizations, it dragged Facebook to the court accusing the company of "trampling" over Belgian and EU privacy law.