Facebook to appeal Belgian ruling ordering it to stop tracking non-users
Reuters
November 10, 2015, 5:05 am
A Facebook logo is displayed on the side of a tour bus in New York's financial district July 28, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
By Julia Fioretti
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Facebook said on Monday it would appeal a court ruling ordering it to stop using a cookie to track people in Belgium who are not Facebook users, but who visit Facebook pages, within 48 hours or face a 250,000 euro (£177,919) daily fine.
Belgium's data protection regulator took the U.S. company to court in June, accusing it of breaching EU privacy law by tracking so-called non-users without their consent.
At stake is the so-called 'datr' cookie, which Facebook places on people's browsers when they visit a Facebook.com site or click a Facebook 'Like' button on other websites.
"We've used the 'datr' cookie for more than five years to keep Facebook secure for 1.5 billion people around the world," a spokeswoman said.
"We will appeal this decision and are working to minimise any disruption to people's access to Facebook in Belgium."
The Brussels court ordered Facebook to stop tracking non-Facebook users in Belgium within 48 hours or pay a daily fine of 250,000 euros to the Belgian privacy regulator, said Margot Neyskens, spokeswoman for Bart Tommelein, Belgian secretary of state for the protection of privacy.
Facebook says the cookie only identifies browsers, not people and helps it to distinguish legitimate visits from those by attackers.
The company has also argued that since it has its European headquarters in Ireland it should be regulated solely by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.
(Reporting by Julia Fioretti, Editing by Jane Merriman and David Evans)
