French Gov't Gives Facebook 3 Months To Stop Tracking Non-User Browsers

Reader iamthecheese writes RT reports that France's National Commission of Information and Freedoms found Facebook tracking of non-user browsers to be illegal. Facebook has three months to stop doing it. The ruling points to violations of members and non-members privacy in violation of an earlier ruling. The guidance, published last October, invalidates safe harbor provisions. If Facebook fails to comply the French authority will appoint someone to decide upon a sanction. Related: A copy of the TPP leaked last year no longer requires signing countries to have a safe harbor provision.

Comments

Youtube next?

[sims 2]

I wonder if youtube is going to be next they keep track of the videos you watch to show you recommended ones on the home page even if you don't sign in.

Re:Youtube next?

[EzInKy]

It is their website after all. Facebook tracks people who don't visit their site. Big difference here. We could use a law such as this French one here in the "land of the free".

Re:Youtube next?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Fair points, but those concerned with privacy take issue with that last remark, that you can use that data however you want. Many countries have laws that may not forbid the collection of data outright, but put limitations on how you can use the data and what for. Often, there is a law that says that you may only use the data for the stated reasons you collected it, and never sell it on to third parties. And there's such a thing as implied reasons and reasonable expectations: the purpose of Facebook's "like" button is ostensibly to allow FB members to show approval for a site, and perhaps to entice non members to sign up. Visitors and site owners rightfully do not expect that button to track them. By the same token, people can reasonably expect to end up in a server log if they visit a site with embedded images. But the implied reason for collecting a server log is to diagnose issues and compile aggregated site statistics, not to track individual users. And tracking cookies can get a lot more information than you can glean from your server logs.

FB's practise of tracking users through their Like button clearly violates privacy regulations in a number of countries. And even so, I don't think legislators are looking to stop people from collecting server logs or to ban 3rd party cookies. They are however putting limits on what companies can do with the data.

Re:Youtube next?

[herve_masson]

What you write is technically true. The thing is: a very tiny fraction of internet users has a clue about ways to protect their privacy. Most of them don't event think it matters. Because it's rather impractical to educate billions of users about this, some need to act to prevent big corporation to abuse their position. That's why french instances gave facebook a warn. Even though thay have no power to enforce anything seriously, I'm glag they took that position.

Works for me

[93 Escort Wagon]

I deleted my Facebook account several years ago. I never visit the site, nor do I follow links that will take me to Facebook even incidentally. Yet, when I do my regular cleansing of cookies, I always find some from Facebook.com and Facebook.net in the list.

Too bad I don't live in France...

Re:Works for me

[gstoddart]

Well, too bad you've not taken ownership of your own privacy and blocked them.

France is saying "no, you can't track people who don't even know they're being tracked and aren't visiting your web site". Until the country you lives in passes privacy laws .. you've got to do it on your own. Sadly, most normal internet users have been tracked by these parasites who feel it's their right to do so.

The amount of websites which have Facebook, Twitter, or any of dozens of other sites which track you even if you don't visit them is mind boggling.

So when those companies say "boo hoo, stop blocking out ads", you need to say "fuck you, I don't consent to being tracked by 15 3rd parties" and use your own blockers.

Most other governments are too much on the fucking payroll to limit what companies can do. The US sure as hell will never to do, the US is pretty much the international champion of the rights of corporations to be douchebags. If your government isn't going to force them to stop tracking you, then you really need to do it yourself.

And, honestly, even if your government tries, you need to do it yourself.

I applaud trying to block this, but the scale on which this shit happens is beyond understanding to anybody who isn't in full possession of their own tinfoil hat.

My primary browser? It can't even see facebook.com. If you're not actively defending yourself from this shit, you're already being tracked, whether you know it or not.

Re:Works for me

[Errol backfiring]

I deleted my Facebook account several years ago.

You cannot delete a facebook account. Everything is stored and stays so. They might have a "delete" function somewhere, but nothing is actually deleted. So you are still tracked and your data is still actively being used.

Just block the cookies..

[duke_cheetah2003]

I like this great tool from EFF. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger Lets you selectively block cookies of all kinds of tracking that occurs during casual browsing.

Why give them 3 months?

[melted]

This should literally be like a 3-line code change. if (not logged in) { // don't log the cookie } Give them three weeks and a stern look to ensure compliance.

Re:Why give them 3 months?

[Zocalo]

You are assuming they are only tracking people based on Cookies. That's a rather naive view, I'm afraid. You'd be better to assume that they are using everything they can get their mitts on to try and track and identify people; IP address, which browser, which headers the browser supplies, any OS details they can get... Just installing extensions to protect your privacy can in itself make you more readily identifiable for tracking purposes. Have a play with the EFF's Panopticlick tool and although you need to enable scripting to make it work the results from the fingerprinting should be an eye opener if you've not seen them before.

Okay, I'll ask.

[BitterOak]

I guess I'll ask the obvious question. What is a "non-user browser"? Is it a browser operated by a robot or something? All the browsers I've used have been meant to be operated by a user. That's kind of the definition of a browser. There are programs like curl and wget which can fetch pages automatically, so is that what they mean by a non-user browser?