Belgian court to fine Facebook up to $125 million if it doesn’t comply with latest privacy ruling

A Belgian court has ordered Facebook to stop tracking people without their consent and to delete all the data on non-Facebook users that it said was collected illegally, the BBC reported on Friday.

The social network could face fines of up to $311,000 a day — up to $125 million — if it does not comply.

According to the article:

Belgium’s privacy watchdog said the website had broken privacy laws by placing tracking code — known as cookies — on third-party websites. Facebook said it would appeal against the ruling.

The court’s decision is just the latest in a data privacy tussle between the Belgian Commission for the Protection of Privacy (CPP) and Facebook. In early 2015, the watchdog group issued a report saying that Facebook’s privacy policy violated European data protection laws. The group prevailed over Facebook in court with a suit directed at cookie-based tracking of non-Facebook European users on third-party sites through social buttons or plugins. Facebook had that ruling overturned on appeal; now, that appeal has been reversed by the court’s decision.

From the BBC article:

Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice-president of public policy in Europe, said, “The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies, and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU.”