Facebook to launch appeal against ruling from Belgium.

A few days ago Facebook announced its intention to appeal against a court ruling ordering the social media giant to stop tracking the online activities of non-Facebook users in Belgium who visit Facebook pages. Failure by Facebook to comply with the ruling could lead to them facing a daily fine of 250,000 euros ($269,000).

In June this year Belgium's data protection regulator issued court proceedings against Facebook which accused the huge U.S. company of trampling on EU privacy law by undertaking tracking activity of people who don't have an account with Facebook and who have not given their consent to Facebook undertaking such activity.

"We've used the 'datr' cookie for more than five years to keep Facebook secure for 1.5 billion people around the world," a spokeswoman for Facebook said. "We will appeal this decision and are working to minimise any disruption to people's access to Facebook in Belgium."

The court in Brussels ordered Facebook to stop this tracking activity within 48 hours or be subject to huge daily fines.

Facebook's argument that, as its European headquarters are in Ireland, it should only be regulated by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, was rejected by the Belgian privacy regulator. 

By Daniel Gardener

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