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.