Slashdot Mirror
European Internet Users Urged To Protect Themselves Against Facebook Tracking
An anonymous reader writes: Belgium's Privacy Protection Commission says that Facebook tramples on European privacy laws by tracking people online without their consent and dodges questions from national regulators. They have issued a set of recommendations for both Facebook, website owners and end users. Net-Security reports: "The recommendations are based on the results of an extensive analysis of Facebook's revised policies and terms (rolled out on January 30, 2015) conducted by the inter-university research center EMSOC/SPION, which concluded that the company is acting in violation of European law. According to them Facebook places too much burden on its users to protect their privacy, and then doesn't offer simple tools and settings to do so, and sets up some problematic default settings. They also don't provide adequate information for users to make informed choices."
Even if you don't sign up or consent they collect data on you. Those like "like" buttons on every page are spying on you, tracking you.
Install uBlock and Privacy Badger to opt out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If you'd read TFA you'd notice that Facebook tracks the activity of non-users. Pages with Facebook widgets on them create a cookie with a UUID that allows them to follow your activity to all other pages that have those widges.
(1) Facebook is tracking people who didn't "sign a contract" (as others have said), and (2) FB can't contract with people to do something illegal. The EU has privacy laws, and any contractual clause(s) which violates them is void.
The link to the actual report in TFA is broken, as it was on the Belgian commission's own site until a few moments ago. So here it is:
http://www.privacycommission.b...
The recommendations for site owners is to enhance the cookie opt-in banner that you already see on European sites. A cookie for cookies! It's buried deep in the heavily enumerated document, so I'll quote it in full:
The one (microscopically tiny) thing APK isn't batshit crazy about:
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.net fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.com fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com static.ak.connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.facebook.com static.ak.facebook.com
hy shouldn't Europeans abide by the contract they willfully sign?
Because luckily in most European countries a signature carries no value if it is used to approve a "contract" that contains illegal clauses. In this specific case, you're not "free" to accept an illegal treatment of your personal data. And we are very happy not to have this "freedom" of yours.
However, I do think that facebook users, by being obvious retards (for the fact of having a facebook account), should not deserve to have their rights protected by courts.
To use a real world analogon: Burglary is still a crime, even if someone didn't lock his front door. Yes, you should lock the door. But it's still a crime to steal, even if you don't lock it. The Belgian Privacy Protection Commission now has listed some ways to lock your door - basicly they did already what you repeat now. Thus your remark could be rated "redundant".
They are accused of tracking people who never signed up to Facebook and who never agreed to be tracked through the use of the like buttons. They don't need nor use cookies to track you. With a script they can reveal a lot of information of your browser, add ons, ip, operating system, last visited page, etc... That information is almost like DNA and can identify you while you browse the internet. This is how Facebook tracks you without ever needing to place a cookie on your computer. They create a shadow profile with this information which is saved on their server and not your computer. You can't request information of your shadow profile, nor delete that shadowprofile.
Facebook thinks they have every right to track everyone, even those who don't want to be tracked. The Belgian privacy commission says they go too far and that they invade the privacy of people who are not logged into Facebook. It is now up to the judge to decide whether Facebook is allowed to track everyone without consent or whether they breach privacy. The result of this case will have consequences for Facebook in the EU.
The only way to fool Facebook is to use multiple computers with different operating systems and browsers and different ISP's and not by deleting cookies.