Facebook could face daily $250k fine for tracking non-users in Belgium

Facebook said it would appeal a court ruling ordering it to stop tracking the online activities of non-Facebook users in Belgium who visit Facebook pages, or face a €250,000 daily fine.

Belgium’s data protection regulator took the US company to court in June, accusing it of trampling on EU privacy law by tracking people without a Facebook account 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, allowing it to track the online activities of that browser.

“We’ve used the ‘datr’ cookie for more than five years to keep Facebook secure for 1.5bn 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 to the Belgian privacy regulator, said Margot Neyskens, spokeswoman for Bart Tommelein, Belgian secretary of state for the protection of privacy.

“Facebook can not follow people on the internet who are not members of Facebook which is very logical because they can not have given permission to follow them,” Tommelein said.