Facebook tracks the web browsing of everyone who visits a page on its site, extensive research commissioned by the Belgian data protection agency has revealed. It became known that this social network tracks even those users who do not have an account or have explicitly opted out of tracking in the EU. The research carried out by experts of the Free University of Brussels was commissioned after an original draft report revealed that Facebook’s privacy policy breaches the European law. According to the data appeared, this social network 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. Facebook tracks users in order to target advertising, authors of the report said. Meanwhile, EU privacy laws state that prior consent must be given before issuing a cookie or performing tracking, unless “it is necessary for either the networking required to connect to the service” or “to deliver a service specifically requested by the user”. The same law obliges websites to notify users that it uses cookies requesting consent to do so. "This report contains factual inaccuracies," a representative of Facebook, who did not want to be identified, said. According to his words, the authors have never contacted the company and asked it to comment on their conclusions before publishing the report.
