14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook decided it was time to set the records straight regarding a Belgian report that has recently made headlines.
The Academic report made several allegations that the tech company did not agree with and considered it was time it sorted things out, providing detailed explanations in an official blog post.
One of the claims that the report had made was the fact that Facebook uses cookies to track people online.
Facebook clears out the misinterpretations, sort of
Facebook said that they had been open about their use of cookies from the very beginning and that the sole reason they use them was to improve their users’ experience by keeping their account secure (cookies help them know when someone else is trying to log in to your account) or by showing them the ads that might be of interest to them.
Another claim that stated that Facebook uses Social Plugins to “add cookies to the browsers of people who don’t use Facebook” was dismissed by Facebook engineers, saying that this was simply due to a bug.
It seems that it was indeed discovered that Facebook had been sending cookies to non-users, but that it had never been the company’s intention to do so.
Furthermore, they added that they are currently working on fixing the issue for that limited number of people who had been affected by this.
In other words, Facebook publicly admitted that it has been using cookies to collect information for people who had never signed up for a Facebook account, but it was merely because of a system bug, which is still ongoing.
Facebook also denied the accusations according to which users do not have control over what information they share regarding their location.
They claim that they do not keep track of their users’ location without their permission, and they even mentioned the fact that they have given them the option to turn off location on their mobile phones.