Belgian court orders Facebook to stop collecting user data

A Belgian court has ordered Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) to stop collecting data on users or risk fines of €250,000 a day.

Belgium’s privacy watchdog said the tech giant had been gathering data on users illegally by placing tracking codes on third-party websites.

“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 last week.

“It also does not gain our consent to collect and store all this information.”

In response, Facebook said they would appeal the decision.

“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,” said Facebook’s vice president of public policy for EMEA, Richard Allen.

“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.”

“We are preparing for the new General Data Protection Regulation with our lead regulator the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. We’ll comply with this new law, just as we’ve complied with existing data protection law in Europe.”

The dispute between Belguim and Facebook has been running for several years. Back in 2015, the CPP commissioned a report by researchers from the University of Leuven, which found that Facebook had been tracking all users without explicit consent.

Belgian courts told Facebook to stop tracking non-members but the tech giant appealed the decision and won.

In response to the new privacy laws, Facebook will introduce new features that make privacy settings more clear. 

“We’re rolling out a new privacy centre globally that will put the core privacy settings for Facebook in one place and make it much easier for people to manage their data,” said the chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg.