A report shows that Facebook uses cookies for non-users also

Apr 1, 2015 11:02 GMT  ·  By

Yes, it appears that even if you do not have a Facebook account, the website still keeps tabs on you, according to a report conducted by the Belgian Privacy Commission.

It is well known that Facebook has some privacy issues and that it cannot offer a secure environment for all its users, but people thought that if they did not create an account at all, then they would be completely safe.

Yet, it turns out that that is not the case. The report states that Facebook uses digital cookies to track the websites that people access online.

Facebook installs cookies without your consent

The Guardian reported that Facebook “places tracking cookies on users’ computers if they visit any page on the facebook.com domain, including fan pages or other pages that do not require a Facebook account to visit.”

In other words, even if you are logged out or even if you don’t have a Facebook account, the social network will still track your web history just for accessing one of its pages, irrespective of your browser settings.

However, this tracking method is against the European Union’s privacy laws, which are known to be quite strict on the matter, not allowing its citizens to be tracked online without their consent.

And most of them have already expressed their outrage at the news that Facebook has been violating their privacy all along, without them even knowing it.

The report also shows that despite the fact that the European Union demands that all websites should ask users if they allow cookies to be installed on their computers, Facebook installs the tracking cookies by default.

In response to these allegations, Facebook has not denied this practice, but has declared for The Business Insider, ”The purpose of the datr cookie is to identify the web browser being used to connect to Facebook independently of the logged in user. This cookie plays a key role in Facebook’s security and site integrity features.”

The company also declared that they disagree with what was written in the report and that they have not been contacted by the authors of the study for further clarifications.