The European Commission has warned EU citizens that they should close their Facebook accounts if they want to keep information private from US security services, finding that current Safe Harbour legislation does not protect citizen's data. The comments were made by EC attorney Bernhard Schima in a case brought by privacy campaigner Maximilian Schrems, looking at whether the data of EU citizens should be considered safe if sent to the US in a post-Snowden revelation landscape.
"You might consider closing your Facebook account, if you have one", Schima told attorney general Yves Bot in a hearing of the case at the European court of justice in Luxembourg. When asked directly, the commission could not confirm to the court that the Safe Harbour rules provide adequate protection of EU citizens' data as it currently stands.
People without Facebook accounts, logged out users, and EU users who have explicitly opted out of tracking are all being tracked, report says. Facebook tracks the web browsing of everyone who visits a page on its site even if the user does not have an account or has explicitly opted out of tracking in the EU, extensive research commissioned by the Belgian data protection agency has revealed.
The report, from researchers at the Centre of Interdisciplinary Law and ICT (ICRI) and the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography department (Cosic) at the University of Leuven, and the media, information and telecommunication department (Smit) at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, was commissioned after an original draft report revealed Facebook's privacy policy breaches European law. The researchers now claim that Facebook tracks computers of users without their consent, whether they are logged in to Facebook or not, and even if they are not registered users of the site or explicitly opt out in Europe. Facebook tracks users in order to target advertising.
The issue revolves around Facebook's use of its social plugins such as the "Like" button, which has been placed on more than 13m sites including health and government sites. Facebook places tracking cookies on users' computers if they visit any page on the facebook.com domain, including fan pages or other pages that do not require a Facebook account to visit. When a user visits a third-party site that carries one of Facebook's social plug-ins, it detects and sends the tracking cookies back to Facebook - even if the user does not interact with the Like button, Facebook Login or other extension of the social media site.
