Facebook successfully sued for tracking people around the web in Belgium, lawyer claims cases could spread

A Belgian court will fine the company €250,000 per day if it doesn’t stop tracking non-users

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Facebook is being forced to stop tracking non-users around the web, and other companies could be getting ready to sue it, according to a lawyer who was part of the successful case.

The site will now be charged €250,000 per day if it doesn’t change the way it uses tracking cookies, after a successful challenge by Belgium’s privacy watchdog.

And the lawyer behind the case, Frederic Debusseré, has told The Independent that he expects other cases to follow.

The Belgian privacy watchdog has successfully argued that Facebook was infringing the privacy of the country’s citizens by tracking them around the internet, even if they hadn’t signed up to the site. It did so using cookies, which would load onto a users’ browser if they went onto a Facebook page — even if they weren’t logged in — and then use that to track when they came back to the site.

During the case, the company said that it was only collecting computers’ IP addresses and unique identifiers that were in the cookie. But the court ruled that that information counted as personal data and so should not be tracked.

Facebook has said that it will appeal the judgement. During the case, it also said that the Belgian courts were not empowered to pass judgement on its activities, since it is based in Ireland and so should be regulated by European courts and its domestic watchdog.

But the ruling could indicate that privacy watchdogs across Europe could now take similar action against them.

“The whole world was looking at this judgement,” Mr Debusseré said. The Belgian privacy authority is part of a group of other national watchdogs that also includes those in Spain and France, and similar measures by the same groups are set to follow.

The Belgian judgement doesn’t bind other courts, and won’t work as precedent. “But the reasoning of the court is very sound and is completely in line with the recent case law of the European Court of Justice,” Mr Debusseré said.