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European Internet Users Urged To Protect Themselves Against Facebook Tracking

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-unfriend-you dept.

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."

6 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Facebook isn't free by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  2. Re:Facebook isn't free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:Facebook isn't free by Polyneikos · · Score: 4, Informative

    (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.

  4. Lost link to report found, and "site owners" by colfer · · Score: 3, Informative

    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:

    To Website Owners
    Relating to website owners or webmasters who wish to use the social plug-ins offered by Facebook, the Privacy Commission refers to its own-initiative recommendation on the use of cookies, in which it stipulates that owners must properly inform visitors of their website and obtain the latter's specific consent for cookies and other meta files of which they may not control re-use. In this context, the Privacy Commission refers to social networks, among others, and recommends that social network buttons are not activated until users have given their specific consent. The current integration possibilities of social plug-ins offered by Facebook, however, do not meet these criteria yet. For the time being, the Privacy Commission therefore recommends to use tools such as "Social Share Privacy" ( http://panzi.github.io/SocialS... ) as a way to obtain user consent. By using a tool such as "Social Share Privacy", third-party plug-ins do not connect to third-party servers (and consequently data are not sent to third parties) until users have clicked on the social plug-in.

  5. /etc/hosts file paranoia by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  6. Re:Facebook isn't free by Sique · · Score: 3, Informative

    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".

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*