April 16, 2015
Panel 2
Facebook in trouble with EU Privacy watchdogs again!
By: Aishani Gupta
Facebook and its privacy policies have been under scrutiny for sometime now in the EU. Earlier this month it was revealed after extensive research by the Belgian Data Protection agency that Facebook tracks users and non-users alike. What this means for us is that once you visit Facebook, whether you sign up for an account or not they start tracking you to understand more about your lifestyle, personal preferences etc. The purpose of this tracking is to be able to give a user targeted advertisements.
This begs the question of how this violates EU law as it currently stands? EU law on privacy and data protection are rather stringent. It is required that all users be given the specific ability to opt out from being tracked online. However, if Facebook is tracking users (whether they are signed into Facebook or not and non users) then they are violating this requirement of giving consumers an opt-out mechanism. Naturally, Facebook’s rebuttal to this report is that they are full of inaccuracies and they have contacted the Belgian authorities for the purpose of clarifying the errors in the report. Though, in later reports Facebook has acknowledged that they do in fact track non-users. Though, quite obviously they claim that this was a bug and they had no intention of tracking non-users.
April 29, is a date that they eyes of privacy advocates from around the world will be on Belgium’s Data Protection Agency. It is then that the Agency will decide whether to take any action against Facebook based on the report or not.
Belgium is not the only country that is providing trouble for Facebook. In Austria as well, there are issues being taken to court. Privacy campaigner “Europe v Facebook” has filed a class action suit (a different version of a class action then it stands in the US) in the Austrian courts.
The investigation by the Belgian Agency has also sparked investigations in Germany, France, Spain and Italy. This demonstrative of the regime in the EU. Targeted action in a collective manner against a Facebook seems to be the key. It will be most interesting to note the determination of these cases by the courts and the subsequent change (if any) in the privacy policies of Facebook according to the directives of these cases. In terms of costs and benefits the social media giant might find that it is easier to change its tracking policies than constantly pay fines in different countries. Let us hope!