Facebook hits back

Facebook has hit back at a new report commissioned by the Belgian Privacy Commission, which claims that Facebook tracks far more users than previously thought.

The report, conducted by researchers at universities in Leuven and Brussels, says the social giant is tracking the browsing habits of everyone visiting its site, irrespective of whether or not they are an account holder, and in complete disregard of whether or not they have opted out of being tracked across the EU.

Additionally, the report says Facebook also continues to track users after they close their accounts and sets tracking cookies on some third party websites. The researchers note that social plugins, such as the Like button, are often behind the setting of these third-party cookies, even if the user does not directly interact with them.

The researchers also say Facebook is placing tracking cookies every time a user visits tertiary pages on its site, such as celebrity pages or shops, all for the purpose of delivering targeted advertising based on other pages they visit across the internet.

Under EU law, websites must generally obtain consent before using a cookie and websites must seek permission from new users before placing them.

In theory, users who have previously consented to particular cookies, can later opt out of having their web browsing history tracked in this way by clicking an 'ad choices' button or similar, as found on many different flavours of advertisements across the web. Taking this option typically allows the user to then choose which internet companies can and cannot track them, or even block them completely.

In the case of Facebook, however, the researchers say that an `opt out` request is interpreted in an unexpected way - it actually places an additional cookie on the user`s device.

Read original article