Facebook Under Fire For "Trampling" On European Privacy

[engine]

If Facebook thinks it can ignore EU authority it might regret taking that stance.

There's a big difference in user tracking when using a site, and tracking when users are not on the site. That's not going to end well for FB in Europe, imho.

Facebook "tramples" on European privacy law by tracking people without consent, Belgium's privacy watchdog has said.

The country's Privacy Protection Commission accused Facebook of dodging questions from European regulators.

Internet users were also urged to install privacy software to stop Facebook tracking them, regardless of whether they had accounts with it.

The social network said it complied with data protection law and questioned the Belgian watchdog's authority. Facebook Under Fire For "Trampling" On European Privacy [bbc.co.uk]

"Facebook has shown itself particularly miserly in giving precise answers," the watchdog said, adding that the results of its study were "disconcerting".

Earlier story Report Says Facebook is Tracking All Site Visitors, Violating EU Law [webmasterworld.com]

[Robert Charlton]

There's a big difference in user tracking when using a site, and tracking when users are not on the site. That's not going to end well for FB in Europe, imho.

I hope it doesn't end well here in the US either. Tracking when I've left FB is a nuisance. They clearly have a system analogous to Double-Click in place... and it's frightening what they're picking up on from the text in my FB posts. The adds are occasionally ingenious, but they are invasive. There's also a problem for anyone who does research, as most of these tracking ads end up not being particularly useful for me as a user.

I try to take pains to log out at the end of every FB session, and frankly it's a PITA. I can also feel a considerable drag on my system when I forget to log out, enough so that system performance is almost a barometer that lets me that I'm still logged in.