Belgium believes Facebook is as bad as the NSA for spying
Belgian Privacy Commission (BPC) said during a court hearing earlier this week that Facebook is spying on its users in Europe. The American social media company is allegedly violating privacy laws, monitors information of non-users and logged-out users, all for the purpose of placing ads, IB Times just wrote in a report.
This is a developing story which started in April this year, when the Centre of Interdisciplinary Law and ICT at the University of Leuven in Belgium claimed the social network’s privacy policy violates European Union laws.
Facebook was quick to respond, saying the part about tracking people who weren’t members of Facebook was a bug and they fixed it. It has also called the BPC report false and has maintained that its practices are in compliance with European Union law.
Still, it didn’t stop the Belgian privacy commission from taking the social media giant to court.
"When it became known that the NSA was spying on people all around the world, everybody was upset. Facebook is doing the very same thing", said Frederic Debussere, representing the BPC.
"We will show the court how this technology protects people from spam, malware, and other attacks, that our practices are consistent with EU law and with those of the most popular Belgian websites", the Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
Currently, Facebook is facing a plethora of charges and changes to how it deals with Europeans information. Several other US corporations including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are also being investigated by different courts in Europe.
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