Belgian researchers found that Facebook was able to monitor the activity of users on the Internet, even when not connected to the social network.
difficult week for Facebook in Europe. While today begin preliminary hearings of his trial in Vienna against 25,000 users, the social network also has to defend after the discoveries of the Dutch Catholic University of Leuven.
Commissioned by the Commission for the protection of privacy, the study analyzes the behavior of “cookies” from Facebook. A cookie is a small file stored on the computer of the user who remembers his activity and preferences on a site to facilitate navigation.
According to the researchers, cookies Facebook follow users all over the Internet, including when they are disconnected if the social network. Even turning off his Facebook account, cookies are continued. Interest in the company is to improve its knowledge of its users in order to provide them with targeted advertising.
In theory, it is possible to get rid of these cookies. The site “Your Online Choices”, an initiative of a European consortium of players online advertising (including Facebook), controls its cookies and disable those that were not intended.
Except that according to the researchers, Facebook has also placed a cookie on this site. This is the toughest of them, as it can follow you for two years, even if you have never used Facebook. The result is ironic: Internet users who visit this site to free dozens of cookies stored on their computers leave for two years tracing. This cookie mainly concern European users, the researchers did not find a similar file on the US and Canadian versions of the site.
These practices, as well as other elements of the Personal Data Policy Facebook, are contrary to European law, according to the Belgian academics. What Facebook is defending in a statement that responds point by point to the researchers.
The social network in their favor on one point: “The researchers did find a bug that could have sent cookies for some people when they were not on Facebook. It was not our intention. We are to solve this problem. “Facebook will however remain silent on the presence of a cookie on the European site” Your Online Choices. “
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